Acousticplayer

Takamine F340

2010-09-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

Circa early 1980's. I was in my early 20's having only been exposed to playing the organ for a few years. I had always wanted to play guitar but didn't want to be one of the thousands (if not millions) of people who start the guitar but then put it down. I knew it was a formidable instrument and I knew I had to be 'ready' to play.

At the time Neil Young was still a major influence on my Musical tastes as well as CSNY so I decided that if I was going to learn the guitar, I might as well learn the acoustic. I thought at the time that if I could play acoustic than electric would probably be easier. So I went out and bought a mid-class (which I couldn't afford) guitar that was on sale for 50% off. That guitar turned out to be a Takamine F340. At the time I had no earthly idea of what the key components were in a guitar. But luckily for me it was built well. A dreadnaught with mahogany back and sides, a solid spruce top, ebony bridge, rosewood fretboard.

This guitar has been with me on most of my life journies. Many memories in this one. Three kids, a divorce, being thrown out a top floor window and many other cases of neglect. But over 25 years later it is still in good shape, a little worse for wear but aren't we all? You can see some of the dings in the picture, but there are probably a dozen or so major ones across the front of the guitar.

My main goal was to finish the acoustic guitar my son and I started (shown above getting a fingerboard glued on). We should be set except for setting of the bridge and actually putting a finish on the guitar. Two large and daunting tasks. So I wanted some practice before I took that on. I had loaned the Takamine to a friend for a couple of years so when I went to pick it up he also had an extremely cheap no-name acoustic that he didn't want. My plan now is to practice on the first acoustic. I would like to pop the fretboard off which is tricky on an acoustic because it is glued to the thin spruce top without much support. A crack or tear here is going to be a large problem. Then once I feel I can do that I will recondition the Takamine. I would like to do a fretboard inlay (of course) and refinish the guitar in a French Polish. If I can do that successfully than I think I am ready to take on the acoustic we were building.

After doing inventory, everything still looks good. Like I mentioned before, there are several large dings and scratches across the face of the guitar. I think most if not all of them I can get out by sanding, but one or two are fairly deep and it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

Here you can see a number of marks from the closing of the case. This is funny because I bought a case to protect it and kept it in the case whenever I wasn't using it. I couldn't afford a good case however and got a cardboard one which warped and didn't close properly after...

The neck looks in good condition. A couple nicks on the back of the neck here too. Frets are worn, fingerboard is in fairly good shape with normal wear and tear. I will be replacing all that anyway. But all in all the neck looks fairly straight. I did have some string buzz at some point which I think was due to some fret wear and slight warpage of the neck. I wasn't knowledgeable enough about guitars then to think about adjusting the truss rod so I ended up putting a shim under the nut to raise the action a little which worked. Since I am redoing the neck anyway, I will probably replace the tuner, nut and bridge so I am hoping that will fix any bridge issues.

The rest of the body is good, a couple of wear points that went through the finish but no real damage. With a good sanding and finish it should look great. Mahogany is a good wood but does need special treatment to receive a good finish. Once I sand I will need to pore fill etc... Getting the lacquer off will be a challenge though. This guitar will have to endure a lot of sanding. So first things first, I will probably take the no-name guitar and pop the fingerboard, if that goes well I will plan on a new fretboard.

This is the pattern I would LIKE to use. It comes with a matching headstock and rosette. I am a little intimidated though :-). In talking with Andy DePaul he did say this is one of his more intricate and difficult pieces, however I have done about a half dozen or more fingerboards, so... will need to think this one out a little...

Shop Master Band Saw

2010-09-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

I do not have a band saw. The top three things I would need to procure for woodworking would be a band saw, a planer (or joiner) and a drill press. So when I was over a neighbors and he offered me a free band saw I jumped at the offer.

It ended up being a Shop Master which were produced in the late 40's and through the 60's. At one time they were the premier tool producer for home workshops. It sports an external induction engine with a pulley to provide the power. I believe the engine was rated at 3/4 HP. I have no idea the year of this one other than to say judging by the dust, grime and dirt it had to be about 50 years old give or take. Being that it may be about the same age as me, I approached it with loving care. My goal was simply to have a band saw that could perform some initial cuts for me. Nothing high production. So my intent was to clean everything, replace the blade and pulley, 'refresh' the motor and oil and lube where needed. I did not want to get into re-finishing, i.e. sanding down to metal and repainting etc since I did not even know that it could run yet.

I decided to start with the engine. I did some research on the Internet and discovered it was a Westinghouse 3 phase electrical induction engine. The wiring looks to be all original with the cloth and fabric insulation which was extremely dry and frayed. I decided to replace all external wiring.

It is obvious from this picture that base plate for the engine was very eroded. It is made from a very heavy and thick metal which has oxidized over the years. My initial plan was to knock the rust off, use Naptha as a solvent and see where I got. Where ever I ran into a bolt or screw I would replace them. Most of them had the square heads that you don't see anymore.

I was able to pop the front of the engine off after some gentle prying. The entire engine was fairly well packed with sawdust and grime. I do not know a lot about electrical engines, just that this was a brushless and enough to know not to mess around too much here, so I ended up using compressed air and removed as much of the 'sediment' as I could.

Here you can see the axle still looks good, I wanted to repack it in grease but only got to use some DW40. Next time I crack it I can add some. For now it was all sawdust removal and some external re-wiring.

Here is is after being scraped with a wire brush, naptha'd down and a little oil applied. I tried to replace the thumb screws but they only had these in a much smaller size. So I don't see me moving the motor much so I decided I would keep them.

So turning my attention upstairs I started to look at the main chasis. All in all pretty good shape for a 50 year old piece of hardware. Still a lot of sawdust stuck every where. The wheels seemed to turn fairly well. As long as the bearings don't go I should be good. I took all the pieces off I could.

I needed to pay particular attention to the band saw guides. The guides were very rusted and had marks that they may have either been the originals or well used replacements. I am thinking they are original. The thrust bearing, which allows you to push the wood against the blade had a lot of gunk in it so it was not turning properly.

I let it sit in solvent, then wire brushed it and then let it dry. After liberal amounts of oil it seemed to be responding much better. I took out all the guide screws and repeated the procedure and oiled the screw holes to make adjustment easier. I am amazed at how simplistic it is but seems to work. The design has changed very little over the years.

Here you can easily see the amount of rust and corrosion over the guide as well as the saw.

Here is the guide after 'treatment'. Looks a little better but really works much better. Once I am convinced that the saw is good and will be used, I can look at a replacement.

I had forgotten there was one under the saw table... I had to remove and do the same process here as well. Not difficult but it did take some time to really look at it and understand how it works so I could put it back together :-)

I also discovered that the table has a tilt mechanism underneath. Once I removed the table I looked at the mechanism which was pretty much frozen in place. The mechanism is a split wedge.

The metal is supposed to separate enough to move the tilt mechanism. Know matter how I tried I could not get it to budge more than a couple millimeters. So I will leave it as is for now. Another component for a return trip if there is one...

Here she is all 'spruced' up, although the throat guard still needs to go on. The engine drive belt and the saw blade are both on order and will be replaced when they arrive. The saw blade was an odd size (77.5 inches) so I had to pick one up custom. Cost me more in shipping then it did for the saw blade...

I fired it up for a test run just cutting a board. It chugged and kind of wobbled to life. This baby was pre-rubber lined wheels, it is a noisy. It didn't seem to have any problem biting into the board. It was fairly slow though, when I pushed I did get some burning. But all in all, it did the work! I thought it fitting that the first board it cut be installed on to it. Be interesting to see how it cuts with the new blade...

add2 and add4 Pentatonic Scales

2010-08-30T16:18:00.000-07:00

Pentatonic Major add4 - Pattern 1 - 5

Ibanez SA Series - Neck

2010-08-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

Time to look at doing the neck. I want to preserve the neck that came with it. It is a Maple Neck with a rosewood fretboard. I will do an inlay on an ebony fretboard and replace the rosewood one but the hard part about neck construction is already done... I of course went to Andy Depaule's Website to look at his choices. He by far has the greatest variety of pre-cut inlay that I have been able to find.

As usual I went through all different combination for weeks on end, but finally decided on the thorn vine. I like vines because they can be somewhat free form. You only have to really worry about the width and not if everything is square to the fret. The difficult part is there are a lot of pieces and trying to get them all to line up the same way more than once is very challenging
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I first soak the inlay in a bowl of hot water to melt the adhesive. I now weight the cardboard down because if you don't the board will move as it absorbs water and the inlay falls off into a big pile which you get to sort out. This of course is a lesson from experience :-)

Once pieces are removed from their backing I like to lay them out. This serves as both practice and a check of the design. The vine length can vary depending on the angles you put the vine together at. You will want to pay attention to frets 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15 and at least 17 as those traditionally have a marker associated with them. With a vine I try to make sure the leaves are in the right frets. So I now draw out a fretboard on a board so I can ensure I am "in the lines". I will refer back to this often.

Once that is all done I then have to transfer the pattern to the ebony fretboard. I first put whiteout on the fretboard and assemble the pieces as I go. Usually I will white out one fret at a time, placing the inlay down while it is still wet so that it sticks. Care must be taken to pay attention to the angle of the vine or you could end up with a real problem towards the end. Always remember, you could hand cut a piece or two for a transition if you were really stuck.

I then scribe around each of the pieces of inlay. Scribing is to inlay, what sanding is to a supreme finish. It will be the basis for the routing. I try to scribe lightly the first time, in case the white out doesn't hold. But with each pass I will press a little harder and deeper. The idea is NOT to cut into the wood but clearly leave an outline within the white out. Any scratching of the wood is just a side effect, not the main intent.

That's where the chisel comes in... I usually will use a chisel and hammer to 'reinforce' the outline, Now cutting into the wood is the main intent. You don't have to go deep. What you are doing is creating a stop line for the router. It will sound and feel slightly different the closer you get to it. It is a nuance but if you can develop it, a very handy one.

All of the planning, measuring and scribing so that we can route! I won't go into all the different bits and sizes, I use mainly a 1/8, 1/16 and 3/32 bit and assorted chisels and knives if needed. I will say it takes time to develop the ability to inlay. It is a skill and skills are learned. So I am learning.

If you were accurate in your scribing, the routing is fairly straight forward. I use a hand held dremel with a precision stand that works well for me. You need to watch for "runs" where the bit grabs the wood and goes. Split outs can happen depending on the type of wood. I am not worried about fret lines at this point. I just cut right through them. When I am done gluing I just recut the frets.

I work my way slowly and methodically down the fretboard. I always hold the piece up to the outline just as a double check, re-scribing when necessary. Again as long as your scribing was spot on you should be good. If not you will either need to redo the scribing and etching or go where it takes you. Because once you are off your pattern it is very difficult to get back. Again, scribing is the key.

Usually I will start with the big bit and do the leaves. I will normally only route a 1-2 fret space at a time. I want to make sure that the shell fits and if I need to do some small adjustments it doesn't have ramifications to something that is already cut. So fret by fret I go. On average a fret area takes about 20-30 minutes to etch, route and fit the piece in. But speed is not the goal here, accuracy is. You get a feel for the bit and the way it bites the wood after a while.

I am going to try something a little different with this one in that I will stop around fret 5 and glue it in. Then continue, stop and glue another 2 or 3 times until I am done. Then I can do a second glue time to fill the small holes and crevices.

Here it is glued. If I continue at my current pace of 2 frets a night I should be able to do my second glue and sand on Labor Day. I will then pop the fretboard and sand the neck done and do the inlay on the headstock. The body is drying... this one is starting to come together!

Continuing on down the fretboard. Notice I tape the pieces I haven't glued in yet. When I use my compressed air I frequently blow them out of their slots and onto the floor so now I tape them which works well.

Here is the lower half scribed. I have a pretty good outline here. I will then reinforce it with the chisel. Depending on the width and the bits I have available I will decide where to start and end. Changing the bits is a time consuming process if done frequently, so it is good to plan to maximize your time with a particular bit.

Here is the design. I had to change it slightly from the original design. Sometimes I get a little confused and can't get the pieces to line up properly, so I just throw them in a pile and start from scratch, which is what I did with the lower roots. It did however come out fairly close anyways.

I have routed as much as I felt comfortable with the larger bit. Now I am ready to start using the fine bit and shaving away the excess. It is a slow process. A lot of running the drill, blowing the sawdust out, stopping the drill, trying the piece, repeat... Of course when you get impatient is exactly where you will make your mistake.

Here I have fitted the inlay into the routes. I am not worried about the fret lines at this point. Once everything is glued in I will have to re-cut the fret scores and then put frets in. I am pretty happy with the overall fit. I would say this one of my best fingerboards so far, but I still have a long way to go...

Here it is as I work down the fretboard. I will do the inlay over a period of a few hours. You kind of get in a zone and just groove along. You have to be very focused and deliberate on your placement of pieces since the margin of error is really small. Once I have completed routing process I will fit all the pieces in and evaluate, tweaking here and there. Hopefully no big errors. Then I will take all the pieces out and arrange them on my layout board and then fill the routes with black epoxy. I then cover it with wax paper and clamp it and let it dry for at least 24 hours, 48 or more if I can.

While that is drying time to address the neck. I am going to use the neck that came with the guitar. So the first thing I need to do is remove the hardware, and pop the fretboard off the neck. I do this with a iron, no steam. I put the iron on hot, put a folded old t-shirt between the fretboard and the iron and heat it up. I then work a spatula like tool in between the fingerboard and neck. It takes some time and patience but I have done this several times now and it is a pretty simple procedure.

I will also be putting a faceplate of mahogany with a trinity inlay over the face so I will sand this down to the wood. I will remover the truss rod and scrape and sand the neck down to bare wood. Then I need to consider total thickness of the neck and fingerboard with what I want on the bridge. The thicker the neck because I am adding height on the fingerboard, the higher the bridge will need to be adjusted.

I chose a sappalle (sp?) Mahogany blank from LMI. I will glue this to the face and using a scroll saw trim it accordingly. The piece was quite a bit a thicker than I thought, as an afterthought I would have been better served just doing a veneer. I will do an inlay of a Trinity in it.

Using my scroll saw I was able to trim it to shape. Then using my spindle sander on my drill press I will shape it to the design of the old face. Then I need to decide what I want for tuning pegs and drill the appropriate diameter hole. I checked on the body which is still drying and it is looking very good. Still some issues in the pickup area, but we will see what polishing will do for it. I will probably look at polishing the first week of October. Finish the neck and decide on the type of bridge. This one is starting to come together!

I need to drill the tuning peg hole before I get to choose where the inlay goes. I can approach the drilling from the rear or from the front. If I approach from the rear I already have the hole as a guide. However it tends to break out this way. I got some splintering around a couple of the holes which you will see later caused a minor issue which the tuning peg washer will cover up anyway. Having done that I could now position the inlay.

As with any Inlay project I applied a liberal coating of white out and stuck the pieces. The trinity is actually three inter locking pieces. I stuck them and aligned them with the angle of the face plate and using a scribe created an outline of the shapes. I felt like I got a very clear outline.

Then taking a chisel I provided a stop line for the outline. Using my Dremel Router I routed the interior. I had a bit that was almost perfect in size, perhaps a tad wide and used that for 80%. I used my thin bit for the rest and clean up.

Once routed I then mixed up my black epoxy. I applied that and filled the outline then pressed the pieces into place.

I then covered the area with wax paper and applied a caul, clamped and let dry for 24-48 hrs. I am seeing a little longer dry times with this new epoxy. Once it dried, I removed the caul, sanded and cut back the faceplate closer to the headstock. I then finished up with the drill press sanding bit. I then sanded the face to about 400 grit. I had to trim the bottom of the faceplate where it meets the nut. This was a bit a tricky and had to be perfectly square. I then took the prepared fretboard and placed it on.

The work usually moves fairly quickly during this process and again I forgot to take detailed pictures. Placing your fretboard on the neck is an exacting process. Any deviation and there will be some type of consequence. So it is measure once, measure twice, and why not a third time? Once I have the placement to my satisfaction I clamp it and then drill three small holes through the fretboard and into the neck. These will help keep the fretboard from drifting when I glue it. Then I go ahead and glue and clamp it.

Then using a band saw or scroll saw I trim the excess of the fretboard away. I then use the sanding bit on my drill press to bring it in close to the neck but still leaving a fraction of a mm for hand sanding where I can put a small radius on the lip. I made a fretboard once and it was too sharp on the edges. You can also get carried away and do too round also where the bottom and top string don't have a straight fingerboard under them.

Here's a peak at what she might look like when done. Looking pretty nice in my opinion.

Here's the headstock after a couple applications of shellac. I will build up the coats and shine then let it dry for a month. The grain has a great 3D look to it.

Next is fretting the neck. Once the body is done I need hardware!

Ebony Faced Electric Guitar

2010-08-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

I had taken an acoustic guitar building class at Red Rocks Community College in Colorado. After completing that course with my son I enrolled in the electric guitar building class also. For the class I had designed a swamp ash body with a 1/4 inch ebony drop top. When I ordered the top I asked the clerk to find the most 'flamed' she could find. I wanted the cream streaking through the ebony. I ordered a maple neck which will also have an ebony fingerboard on it. I had considered making the neck out of ebony but I remembered someone in class who tried to do a neck out of Rosewood and it didn't look fun. Knowing that working with ebony can be challenging I decided to go with Maple to hopefully counter act some of ebonies dampening effect.
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Unfortunately I had an accident with a table saw and had to cancel the class. The class was to start in late January and I hurt myself early in Jan. The materials sat in a box (in a room with a humidifier) for about 8 months. I thought instead of enrolling in the class I would try to do it myself. I had the DVD and have done modifications on guitars before. I quickly found out that I didn't have the tools I needed. Mainly a band saw and belt sander. I called around and found a wood shop that would do custom work. Initially we had looked at doing a CNC Router but I could not obtain the digital license to do so.

So I asked the wood shop to join the Ebony to the Swamp Ash and reduce it to 1 3/4 inches. I also instructed them to transfer the shape to the wood and using a band saw cut to within a quarter inch. They were surprised at the 1/4 inch. I may regret it but we will have to see. I wanted to be able to carve the guitar without fear of getting to small. I have not yet made an electric from scratch so we will see what we end up with... (update, if I did not obtain the band saw I would have greatly regretted it. I would say next time 1/8 or 1/16th of an inch. But because I had a band saw I was able to trim it up quickly)
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I was contemplating doing an inlay on the body. I was not sure what I wanted so I decided to cut up some of the scrap to get a feel for the wood and how it inlays. I had the headstock left over from the vine inlay since I was going to use the trinity with it. So I decided to go ahead and inlay with the vine headstock. Nothing else I would have a very pretty paper weight...

Like all inlay, my first step was to apply whiteout and scribe it. I spread the whiteout nice and thick then assemble the pieces together and apply a little downward pressure so that it sticks. While not perfect, this has been the best method for me so far. I bought the scribe from Stewart McDonald, while not entirely necessary, I must admit it has been a nice accessory.

Using my Dremel router I then remove the wood and fit the pieces. I have been getting better at the fitting part. Again I found if I do a good job on the scribing, the fitting goes much smoother.

I have been struggling with the size of the bit, the thin is so thin, they burn out very quickly. The next step up I have is just a hair too roomy for the vine. So I have been using my medium to do thicker parts of the vine and the leaves. I then can go in with the thin bit and tidy up. When I have to cut a vine using the thin, there is usually smoke and some burning. I then have to shave the side with the bit or us a chisel
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Regardless, once all routed time to mix up some epoxy. I was using clear epoxy mixed with ebony wood shavings, which was working fairly well. It was causing a lot of air bubbles though. I bought a bottle of the pre-mixed with black dye. It seems to work well, less bubbles, good color, but it dries slower and has more of a gummy texture when first dried. It seems to do fine with sanding so...

Here it is with sanding in progress with 80/120 grit. There is still some epoxy on the top of the vine so I will switch over to 220 then 400 then 800 then do a French Polish on it. I will have to stop my French Polishing for awhile. The next few steps are going to produce a lot of sawdust...

I decided since this was my first electric guitar from scratch I would follow the blue prints that came with the kit from LMI. It was a design from Robbie O'Brien from O'Brien Guitars. He was also my instructor when I took the acoustic guitar making course at Red Rocks Community College. The design is an interesting one. It takes from both the Fender Stratocaster (with the two prominent horns and easy fingerboard access) and the Gibson Les Paul with the large solid body, rear control cavity and two double humbuckers. I like this design a lot, but if I do a second I will cut down on the thickness, 44.5 mm is pretty large and with the 1/4 inch of ebony it rivals any Les Paul in weight. If I had a planer I could bring it down. I have a hand held belt sander but am afraid of uneveness. I don't have to commit right now. Once I rout the top lip of the control cavity then I am committed.

I took the plans and cut out the guitar body. I glued that to a 1/4 inch press board and let it dry for a day. I then took it to the band saw and cut out the general shape. I have recently purchased a robo-sander for the drill press. I then finished it using the sanding bit in the drill press. I then cut out the humbucker cavity using a Forstner bit then a scroll saw and finishing up with sand paper on a stiff block. I used the Forstner bit to drill out the holes for volume, tone and pickup switch. I then screwed the template to the op of the guitar body. Now that I had the template I could push the body into the drum sander and the bushing would hit the template when it was done. Same concept as routing with a template. I was able to get a fairly good body shape, I will have to do some touch up on some areas that broke out a bit but all in all a fairly efficient way to make sawdust.

The next step was to drill out the humbucker cavities. There are several ways to accomplish this. I used Forstner bits to remove the bulk of the wood. I started out with the small diameter bits and went down exactly 3/4 of an inch down.

Then I came in with progressively larger diameters until I cleared the area pretty well. As you can see the Forstner made quick work of the area. This part was fairly easy but I went very slowly since this was my first time. I measure 4 times before I cut knowing that every move is irreversible.

So I took a break to sharpen up the chisels :-) I haven't used them in awhile. They were still pretty sharp but I wanted to practice my sharpening skills so they got a nice razor edge to them. I will usually regrind them fine/extra fine then put a nice edge using the strop. Every time seems better, so I just keep doing it every now and then.

Now that my chisels are nice and sharp I can go in and clean up rather easily. The template provides a nice demarcation and support. The ebony though is very hard and prone to splintering or chipping. The Swamp Ash is rather porous and soft. So the trick has been enough power to get through the ebony but not out of control in the Swamp Ash.

All of this work has created a very pretty but omnipresent saw dust and shavings... Sort of a chocolate/vanilla. The shop does smell really good with the ebony, i love that smell.

Now that I have the humbucking cavities drilled out and cleaned up I can take the template cover off. The Guitar looks large to me at this point. That's a lot of wood... I am very curious about the tonal qualities once I am done. I am holding myself to building it to plans first then I can modify after. I do think with a proper french polish this will be a stunner. I also like Swamp Ash tone, at least the airy part if not the higher tones so I am very curious to how the ebony top will effect tone. I had purchased a whammy bar bridge but am reconsidering. The plans show a six screw face plate bridge. I love the two post (tunamatic) bridges so would consider modifying that. But we'll see, I did say I was holding myself to building it to plans first then modifying...

Now I need to drill the rear control cavity. Personally I like the rear control cavity better than the strat design simply because it shows more wood. I love the look of wood and a good finish. The Stratocaster pickguard covers over 50% of the surface area. I created a rear control template out of mdf.

Again using the Forstner Bits I start removing wood. The width of the Guitar is about 44.5 mm. I need 4 mm of wood left for the shaft of the pots to go through. 4 mm is not a lot of room for error, and if there is a mistake here, it could be un-recoverable. You are relying on your math and your measurement at this point. So I went in stages, drilling to 35mm, measure, 37mm, measure, you get the picture.

My intention was to leave a bit more than 5 mm of wood and work from there. This wood is fairly 'soft' and smokes easily if you don't watch it. The Forstner bits make quick work of the main outline out of the control cavity.

I am glad I sharpened my chisels. I can now go in with chisel and mallet and clean up the outline. The work goes fairly quickly. There will be two potentiators or "pots" and a switch to engage the neck and/or bridge pickups. The shafts are about 5 mm with the washer so I will have to take a little more off but want to finish sanding the front before I make the decision of how much. I can expect to take 1 - 2 mm off the ebony when I am done.

Here is the cavity routed and chiseled. Now using the sanding drum on my drill press, I will sand it smooth. Once I am done with that I will need to route the 'lip' so it sits flush in the back. I haven't decided what material I will make the back cover out of yet. Maybe I will ask my wife to design something in polymer.

Ibanex SA Series

2010-07-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

This guitar was finished in a 'rough finish'. they did not fill the mahogany grain (on purpose) so the wood felt textured. The funny thing is after playing it for a while you get a high gloss finish where your picking hand rubs against it, otherwise it is a matte finish. I must say, I always thought the finish was very nice but I am ready for a change.

I had painted some Chinese characters for Sensei (Teacher) on it. I am thinking about trying to do some handcut inlay to represent those characters. It is a S-S-H configuration (my favorite) and just one volume tone series (also my favorite).

I had some fairly large dings and dents on this. Mahogany is not the hardest wood and with no protective finish it did pick up a lot more wear than other guitars. The other issue with the open grain was it is easier to flake off.

It has a rear control access (which I also love), keeping the front mostly wood. It had a floating tremolo which I normally don't use so I will be probably putting in a fixed bridge. Notice the four neck bolts aren't symmetrical.

I find that when I first went through I went to fast and spent a lot of time trying to repair things with 220/340 which #1 doesn't work and #2 is just plain painful. So I did have to go back to the 80 and 120 to repair a couple of spots. But I think in the end I had the best sanding job I have done to date. I did a leave a gouge in the back though. Now I think I should have sanded it out but at the time I was nervous about taking off too much wood on the back. As you will see though, it did fill and blend in to an extent later on.It was a lot easier stripping this guitar down then others with a high gloss finish on it. Here is a picture of it stripped down next the GAX guitar I am doing.

I am starting at 80 grit. I probably could have gone 60, no problem. I spent a lot of time with 80 grit and 120 grit. What I learned is even with this grit you need to double check for scratches, especially ones that go against the grain. It is difficult to get an 80 grit scratch out later on. You can't avoid them at that grit, but at least ensure the last sanding at 80 is done with the grain. This is a butcher block body with a couple of nice boards. The color of the third and fourth are a darker tone. It is open grain with some nice subtle coloring. I am thinking just a little red amber tint to the french polish. I will have to grain fill and seal on this one. Having learned a lot from the flame maple test board I was ready to be very precise in my sanding and wood preparation requirement. In other words I wanted to put a lot of attention to these areas as I have found them quite troublesome later on...

From 80 Grit I plan to go 180, 320 and maybe 400. At around the 180 stage I will start the grain filling process. I plan on doing that process twice. Then sealing it. I am unsure if I will dye it or not. I have some pecan stain that might look good. I think I have a spare piece of mahogany I can test it on.

The finish is not too bad to remove and it did not stain the wood too deep. I used the ROS at 80 Grit and it took it done pretty well. The horns are difficult (as always) but I have an old belt sander loop at 80 Grit that I cut into stips. I have some felt and I was able to create a semi-firm sanding tool that worked fairly well. For wood removal I went from side to side (horn to neck), but for the final sanding I go top to bottom. I think it leaves a better transition. Historically I have been doing a terrible job on the horns so I really concentrated on this one. Ibanez does the offset screw holes for the neck. I prefer the rounded neck to the standard square.

Well plans change. I initially was going to use a water based grain filler with a little dye thrown in. I read a lot of articles on Internet and decided on using shellac for the grain filler. Here's a link to the original great article. In summary, you basically sand to about 180 grit than using shellac you put on several thick coats. All you are really wanting to do here is fill the grain pores. Filling with Shellac is supposed to give you a more 3-D look to the pores since it is somewhat translucent, rather than opaque. I found this very appealing since I had everything I need and was familar with shellac.

Here is a picture after the first coat. The wood really soaked it in which meant the pores were filling up (I think...) The sides and the horns came out pretty well this time, but I spent a lot of time on them. I had to be sure not to leave any large scratches.

When I get 4-6 Coats on I will than sand down to wood. It should have shellac freckles all over which indicates the filled pores. I then put shellac back on and level as normal. The wood in this guitar is very nice, and fairly uniform. There are distinct lines where it was butchered blocked but some very nice coloring. One of the boards has a pinkish redish run in it, very beautiful. I am complete with my coats and am ready to sand tomorrow night. I am currently working on deciding the inlay for the fretboard. I am considering doing my own cutting but am trying to talk myself out of it :-)

Here is the guitar body with the 4-6 coats of shellac on it. The surface, although you can't really see it, is very bumpy, pimply almost.

Here it is from the back. I did hesitate to take sand paper to it.

I used 150 grit hoping it wasn't too much. After sanding it down you can notice little red spots. That is where the varnish stuck in the pores after sanding. In retrospect I still would have used 150 Grit but probably for a shorter and more focused sanding.

The area below the bridge had abundant, large pores. I think this area will really look spectacular once finished.

I had to pay particular attention to the transition areas at the bottom and sides. The horns required a lot of extra attention also. I did get some good scratches and will have to go to 220 to try and remove them all while judging how deep the shellac really got in the pores. I then work up to 220 grit and 340 grit.

I am starting to believe sanding is the key. This is the skill I have to pay particular attention to. I don't particularly enjoy it, but I think it's key. You can't rush through the steps either, they demand the time and attention no matter what the schedule. I have to remind myself each day, I am NOT going to finish my project today, no way. :-) It teaches you patience.

Here I will have to sand a little more. I am not worried as long as it is as level as I can make it. I am using two felt blocks, one medium and one small. If there are some spots of varnish left, the new coats will cover them.

Here is a picture of the gouge that I left in the back. You can see the wood does have a pretty open grain. I like the coloring of this particular body, a lot of reds and pinks.

As always the horns, sides and transition areas all take a lot more attention. It gets difficult sometimes on the sides to know if your done or not since the grain does not travel in one direction. So with the 80 grit it still looked very rough and scratchy, but as I increased the grit it seemed to clarify nicely...

And now begins the French Polishing process. As always, I started with 2# cut, adding more alcohol as necessary. I will apply this fairly wet, but not allowing runs or pools. I will do this about 3 times each front and back. Each time I do one side I do the interior of the horns as well as the sides, so that they actually recieve about twice as much as the front or back which is good.

In between french polishing sessions I will use alcohol to rub it out. The purpose is to smooth out any runs or ridges that remain. I use the airplane landing and taking off stroke. After the three sessions it looks like the above picture. You can see the grain is pretty filled in, not much 3-D but a definite shine starting. The reflection is still refracting, so everything is fuzzy and not well defined in our gloss, but we aren't close to done yet. Notice the blurry spot on the lower left hand area. There are several reasons why you get these. This one was I spilled some alcohol on it :-( But since I had three coats on I figured I was pretty close to having to level anyway.

If I followed the new process exactly, I would now resand down to the wood. I decided since I really had a pretty good fill from the first coat of varnish, and I paid a lot of attention to the sanding, I would just level it.
In my opinion, leveling is a fun process. You take some type of object that provides a flat surface. I use a felt block. I feel especially for guitars it gives a nice solid backing, but has enough give for the curved surfaces of a guitar. I usually use 800 grit unless there are obvious defects I am working on, then I will go as low as 400. The intent is to leave a smooth and flat surface behind.

When you sand, you should ideally be leaving a uniformly dull surface behind. If you have little amber speckles you have irregularities in your surface and will never achieve the super high gloss (mirror like). But this is just a check, as you apply more and more shellac to the depressions and sand the top of the surface, you will eventually achieve a level surface.

You can see I am about 80% the way there. Most of my pores are filled in very nicely, I have a fairly uniform dullness to the top with some irregular surface towards the outer edges. We are are ready for the bodying process.

and this is where it starts to get fun... After an additional coat of shellac and an alcohol rubbing the gloss is starting to reflect more distinctly. Notice the color is starting to deepen. I probably won't be able to do it for this guitar, but I will be buying some amber shellac flakes so I can add a deeper tone if I want. Right now it is a little light but I think by the end we will have just the tone I was looking for...

It's really staring to look good. Time to start to look at what I want for a neck. I would like to do a hand carved mahogany neck for this body, ebony fretboard with some mother of pearl inlay...

I continued the process of leveling and building for several weeks. I could not correct an issue between the neck and middle pickup. It was very dry and dull. I tried several things to correct it, sanding, pumice, stiffing. I even tried floating pure varnish on top of it! Nothing. I follow someones blog on french polishing an acoustic guitar and from our postings I think I determined that I was not applying enough pressure in the french polishing sessions.

Once I started really putting some pressure behind my rubbing I began to see drastic improvements. In order to increase the pressure though, it was almost mandatory that I use oil too. Other wise it ended up looking very dry and sometimes congealed on itself. When I used oil I could really increase the pressure to the point were I was working up a moderate sweat, I could see the shellac turn glass like. Nice! (Thanks Martin).

Here is the guitar ready to sit and dry for about a month. Then I will begin the polishing. While that is drying I will be working on the neck.

October 2nd, 2010
Finally, we can start polishing.

I have trepidation about polishing with polishing cream instead of hand polishing with alcohol only. I am concerned about possible burn through, I have put a lot of effort into this one and to start over would be daunting. I have a Medium, Fine, Extra Fine and then wax. I also have a nice hand held pneumatic polisher. It greatly simplifies the process but definitely increases the risk for burn through.

So starting with the medium, I smeared it evenly on the pad. I then pulled the trigger and gently ran the polisher over the body while pausing to wipe away the residue periodically. The desired result is a hardening and solidification of the coat and it because increasingly reflective. I was able to build a very strong shine but I still had a problem.

The area around the top neck and middle pickup has resurfaced. It looks dry and dull and is spreading with repeating polishing. Damn. I don't want to start over. It is only noticeable from a certain angle oddly enough, but it is noticeable. Not knowing exactly what it is causing it makes it hard to fix it. I decide to finish polishing medium - fine, then try rubbing out with more shellac, alcohol and a lot of oil so I can build up the heat on it like I did last time.

I was able to do that and it looks like I was able to rub it out. I will let it dry though and see where we are tomorrow. I might be able to just polish it and go from there...

Check out the shine on the horn :-)

Ibanez GAX 70 Project II

2010-07-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

As a summary, I took an Ibanez GAX 70 and stripped it down. The grain was really substandard which would explain why the opaque paint. I tried dyeing it with cherry red stain and a spray can lacquer. I wasn't really pleased with how it was going so I decided to strip it all back to the wood.

I am learning that so much depends on the sanding process. I think that the single most fundamental concept when re-finishing electrics is the sanding process. I have read this so many time, but it wasn't until I got to the final product that I saw why. Part of the learning process.

I have also learned that the wood may look fine to the eye, but the moment you put dye or stain on it scratches will show up. I am in the process now of trying to do my best job sanding with the lower coarse grits, at this level you can see most of the areas that need addressing. Then I advance to the medium grit, when I think I am ready to go to the fine, I dye/stain the wood at this point. This brings out most of the scratches right away.

Most of the time the following areas need to be re-addressed: the horns, area around the bridge posts, the slopes near the horns on the front and on the back. End grain needs to be addressed slowly and completely.
I have also noticed an issue with the horns becoming slightly angled or 'sharp'. I usually need to spend a little time with the medium grit to smooth these areas out.

I decided to try a black leather dye. The wood is agatha and reminds me of a low grade mahogany. It seems to be a fairly soft wood which is difficult to deal with when you are trying to get things perfectly flat. The dye was very easy to apply. I just took a cloth, poured some dye on the cloth and rubbed it in. I rubbed it in the direction of the grain. It has just a hint of red/purple in it. My initial thought was that I would dye it as a base coat and then put an opaque paint on top of it. But the color is starting to grow on me...
to be continued...

Changing a pickguard

2010-06-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

I had refurbished a fender squier and gave it to my son. He had requested a different pickguard so I had the opportunity to take the guitar apart (again). While changing out a pickguard sounds easy, it did involve some time.

I left the strings in place, taping them off at the the bridge and removing them from the tuners. Then I unscrew the screws that is securing the pickguard in place. There are 11 in this particular pickguard and 8 in the replacement. After removing the screws I normally take all the knobs of the pots and take of the retaining nut so that all the electronics can fall into the guitar. I also unscrew the pickup holders.

Test Board - French Polishing

2010-06-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

I had a spare maple board which had some nice flame on it so I decided to do some testing with the application of shellac. I wanted to start to get a feel for the process from beginning to end and start to correlate certain issues/events with the stage, so in every stage I know what I am anticipating or need to do to prevent problems in other stages.

This was a maple board with a little flame already visible in it. I am finding that the key to any finishing project is the preparation as in sanding... I have been bringing my surfaces to at least a 320 grit but what is more important I am finding, is that the woods needs to be as level and as smooth as you can make it. I am starting to learn what a good sanded piece of wood in 80 grit is related to 180. You can see this board had some damage on the ends that would need to be taken care of.

Here you can see I have brought the board down to 320 grit which repaired the ends nicely. I have learned so far that really anything less than 200 is for wood removal and shaping. The lower you go the more wood you can remove but you will leave large scratches. That is the purpose of the higher grits. The trick for me so far has been to really understand the removal in the lower grits and assure I am as level and shaped as I can be at that grit before moving on.

My steps in French Polishing have been:

1) Preparation (becoming a larger and larger part of the project)

2) Spit coats - usually 3 coats of French Polish applied. I used a thicker concentration.

Spit coats are applied the same as other coats but a little wetter and with less regard to runs and streaking. Normally I judge the thickness and the saturation of the Muncea by patting it firmly on the back of a gloved hand. The spit coats I will put on fairly wet, not as worried about runs and ridges to a point. The goal here is to apply shellac in a base coat. If the surface is prepared properly all that is needed between the spit coats and building layers is to level.

3) Building layers (Bodying)

The purpose of bodying is to start to build up enough layers to get a consistent flat and even surface. There are several sub-steps to bodying. I won't cover creating the muncea etc, there are plenty of resources on the web which cover this.

The application of the shellac falls into three major components within bodying.

1) Circular rubbing motion

Basic technique of using small circular rubbing to thinly apply the shellac over the wood. You want the muncea to be wet enough where you see shellac being spread very thinly but you will see definite swirl marks and ridges after application

2) Straight "brushing"

Still using the shellac muncea I use the 'airplane' stroke. As you approach the wood, think of the muncea as an airplane making a landing. Brush the wood in the direction of the grain and as you approach the end of the board you take off. This creates a smoother spread surface across the wood.

3) "Stiffing" with alcohol

Using just alcohol and using the airplane stroke I further smooth out the shellac. Alcohol will dissolve the shellac and move it out over the wood. Care must be taken not to 'bottom' out the shellac and move it all to the edges.

4) "Stiffing with alcohol and Pumice"

I only use this if I need some abrasives to move the Shellac around. I normally use Pumice if I have some pitting or runs that I need to take care of.

Here I am showing my muncea getting ready to be applied to the board. My muncea's are in different shapes and sizes depending what I need to do. I have read several resources on making the muncea. I have been primarily using gauze as the inner reservoir and the outer being a t-shirt type of material. I have been considering trying a linen outer covering.

This is after a couple of spit coat applications. You can see it starting to build. To the left I had some issues with the grain being a little more open than Maple usually is. You can also notice the appearance is 'flat', not very shiny. So far I have noticed with the spit coats you will get a 'wet' looking shine but not even and not very reflective. As you get into the bodying you will start to build a shine that can get to a gloss. As you level it will be more matte. Than when you get into the polishing phase that is where you move from gloss -> high gloss to mirror like.

This is after the initial spit coats. You can see there is a base coat of shellac that is fairly even across the board. The flame is starting to become more three dimensional. There is a minimal to moderate shine across the board. Light reflected at this point is blurry. As we build the coats and begin smooth it out the definition in the shine becomes much more clearer. The goal at this stage is to have enough of a base coat so that we can begin to manage and level the surface.

I have gone through at least 3 complete body building phases, used Pumice to smooth out some of the pitting and stiffed it with just alcohol. You can see an even gloss across the board. You can see some ridges going the direction of the grain after stiffing. I have a choice here, I can try pumice which will not reduce the thickness of the layers, or leveling. Leveling is using a felt block (so that you have an even firm surface) with sandpaper to level the surface. Depending on what I am trying to do and where I am in the building I will use as coarse as 400 grit building up to 800 grit towards the end of the project. Right before polishing I can go as high as 1200-1500 before starting with the polishing cremes.

You can distinctly see the outlines of objects in the gloss. They are a little blurry now, but will sharpen up as I continue the process.

Here is the board after several coats and a couple of leveling sessions. You can see the flames are taking on a much more 3-dimensional appearance. As the shellac grows in thickness with more applications, the light is refracted giving it the appearance of another dimension. There are still some ridges but they are much less defined. We are at a matte to low gloss. We have some reflection starting to build but the reflections would not be very defined.

Here you can see the streaking and some pitting of the shellac a little. Depending how severe the pitting or streaking is there are three processes I have at my disposal. One is to 'stiff' the board using a Muncea and just alcohol, no shellac. If the problem is a little more defined I will use pumice and the alcohol. I can also use abrasive wet sanding with sandpaper. I tend to be very judicious with this though. I try to do 3 complete body build-ups before leveling since the process will reduce the amount of shellac on the board. Some repair can be done in the polishing phase, but not much, so it is important to keep on the offensive as you build.

After I have completed the building, usually a minimum of 10 complete body building sessions, usually around 20 - 30 I take a final inspection. If I feel I have enough shellac built up, and a level surface with a minimum of pitting and ridges I can start to look at 800 Grit sand paper. I usually will start at 800, then 1200, then 1500 then start the polishing regime of Med, Fine and Swirl Remover followed by wax. I put the wax on just for an extra protective coat and it responds well to wiping. If damaged it is very easy to repair.

Here is a photo of the board after sanding with 800 grit. You notice it is dull in appearance. There are some shiny spots which are just a slight unevenness. I personally leave it at the 800 stage and relieve it with the other phases of sanding. You could just bring it right down using the 800 so it is even throughout.

The 800 grit has leveled the surface fairly well but it has left major scratches in the surface. The 1200 will level a little more and catch the areas we didn't get with the 800 but the major purpose of the 1200 is to start to even up and remove the scratches left by the 800 grit. As the ridges are reduced the shine will start to come through.

Here you can see the board after the 1200 grit sanding. A nice sheen is starting to develop as well as some three dimensional appearances to the grain. This is where it starts to get fun.

The instructions say if you sand with 800 grit start with the coarse polish. I sanded to 1200 and sometimes 1500 and start with the medium. In the beginning I used power tools to do the application but the time periods are shortened quite a bit and I have definitely sanded through more than once. So on the smaller pieces I am sticking to hand polishing. I take a cotton cloth, fold it several times to create a pad than using the pad simply start rubbing. I want to feel and hear some abrasiveness of the polish against the finish so I add more polish as necessary.

I usually polish for 3-4 minutes than rub off the polish, assess, reapply and continue. I have found at this stage I am more worried about ridges and any deformity in the finish. I have noticed a couple of issues at this stage that I needed to address. One was 'dull' spots. Spots that just weren't shining up. I had to assure myself that there was shellac underneath and then spent some time rubbing it out. I guess I could reapply shellac at this point but they ended up rubbing out for the most part. The other was fine pitting. I was OK with the fine pitting figuring that the fine polish was going to take care of it. If not I had no issue in going back a step and reapplying the medium. In general you want to see no or minimal ridges, fine, not coarse pitting and a shine starting to build. If not you really want to assess if you have enough shellac built up, you spent enough time at the leveling phase building a level surface and that you applied the medium with enough rubbing to get it to that stage. It took me about 15-20 min (3 applications) on this small piece of wood wiping it down in between.

Now time for the fine polish. At this point you should have a good shine going with some of the grain popping. You should have reflection but the definition of the reflection may be blurry which is fine. There really shouldn't be any defined ridges, they should have all been knocked down by the previous process. There may be remnants of the ridges, but they should be very minimal. The pitting should be fine or non-existant, you want to have no dull spots if possible. Like I said, I am not sure of the etiology of these but I am pretty sure these are present before you get to the final leveling. The only way I know how to get rid of them at this stage is to continue to polish and rub them out.

Here you can see application of the fine polish. Again using a cotton cloth I simply rub it, same as for the coarse, 2-3 applications and lots of rubbing. You will start to notice a definite shine and 3-D appearance starting to build. Reflections are getting much clearer at this point. If you are trying to achieve just a gloss or a matte you could finish out here. If you want to temper the shine using some 0000 steel wool before your wax application would work. I am going for the mirror, so onto the next step.

Here is a photo of the board after the fine polish. Notice the reflection is much more detailed, the woods has a definite 3-D appearance and everything looks fairly finished. All the swirl remover is going to do is increase the shine and reflection so you want no ridges, no pitting and no dull spots at this point. The quality of the reflection (Shine) is what we are working on now.

Time to apply the swirl remover. I notice a definite change in appearance when I apply the swirl remover. This is probably my favorite part since I know I am almost done and the change can be rather dramatic if you have done all the previous steps correctly. The downside to this particular part of the process is this is where you really find out if you did do the other steps correctly. You can get to this stage and have some issues start to appear that were always there, but now they are more noticeable. Not a good feeling ;-)

Here you can see the board after the swirl remover is applied and quite a lot of rubbing. Again 2-3 applications with rubbing it clean in between. You can see I have good definition, very good 3-D looking grain and the flame came through very nicely. At this point I apply wax for a couple of reasons. One is wax adds a protective coating. Very easy to repair and it responds well to wiping. So as people touch and hold and deposit their finger oils all over it, wiping it down well will get rid of it and restore the luster, a win-win.

Same process, 2-3 coats and lots of rubbing. At this point you can just rub and rub... Notice that with every rubbing session, the definition of the reflection just becomes tighter and tighter. I could actually read the writing on the bulb in the reflection. The grain has a great 3-D appearance and I am just about done.

I tried a lambswool buffing wheel on the edges of this board but it quickly burned through. Guess I will need to practice this technique more, so I stuck to hand buffing.

Here is the finished test board after shellac applied, sanding, polishing and buffing all done. I would say about a 2 month process. On a finished guitar probably about 3-6 months depending on what you are trying to do and how much drying or gassing off time is permitted. I have read that the gassing off process will continue for a year after. All in all a very satisfying process. Not for the week of heart or impatient person, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Maple Guitar Project (Stratocaster)

2010-05-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

This guitar actually started it's life as a Fender Squire. I found it in a Guitar Center, and it had a ding in the front about 2-3 mm in diameter. I struck a deal with the salesman and brought it home and immediately dismantled it. Here is the original body before stripping it down.

In order to do this I had to route out some wood to accomodate the veneer. I carefully measured the strip so that it would 'follow the necks trajectory". I used a chisel to put in a stop line for the router and then very carefully routed the wood. I then went in with a block of wood and sandpaper to clean it up. I did the same on the front.

I ended up doing initial 'little circles' and figure eights, then using the 'brushing technique' explained in the Millburn Guitars Web Tutorial. Then I would go back to the little circles then the brushing. I could usually do this with recharging the muncea once. I would do 4-6 layers then level. Leveling is simply taking a felt block and wrapping it with wet/dry sandpaper and sanding the surface level, taking care not to hit the wood. I had a fair amount of shellac down before I leveled. I would say at least a good 20 layers. The goal of leveling is to have the entire surface look dull which means that the sandpaper was able to hit the surface at a consistent level. If there are depressions than they will remain shiny. You have two main choices, continue bodying and eventually after several levels you will obtain a flat surface (which is what I did), or you could sand until you the areas are no longer shiny. This in my opinion is a fairly risky solution.

Also don't forget about the sides. When I would do a surface say the front, I would do both sides down to the bottom but not the heel so I could stand it up. When I did the back I would again do the sides but do the bottom and stand it on it's top. That way the sides got a very liberal application of shellac. this guitar has absolutely beautiful grain on the sides to begin with. In this picture I think I had level for the first time. You can see the shellac build up and a shine starting. The shine took a while to develop. Definately starts as a matte finish and then with each leveling and reapplication the shine seemed to pick up a notch.

Heres another shot of the end grain. This had been leveled 2 times.

When I got to the 4th leveling, I only had a couple of shiny spots, one near where the veneer meets the body, so I doubted I would be able to make that meet and it was only noticeable on leveling. Probably should have fixed that during the sanding process... But barring that, it was pretty consistent in it's dullness across the body. At this point I could have moved on to glazing. That is the same as bodying but you use the brushing technique 80% of the time and only use circles to fix up areas. Since I thought I had a fairly consistent surface I decided to move to the automotive polishes. I have a medium, fine and swirl remover. I had just purchased an air driven polisher so was excited to give that a try. Above is the result using the medium and fine. I think there can be a fair amount of hand rubbing to get it to where I will then use the swirl remover. The hand rubbing does seem to put more of a sheen to it but the polisher was definably a god send for the brute force.

Here is a picture of the back. You can notce a fairly detailed sheen starting to develop by the outline of the lamp. I am going after a high gloss but want to stop short of the mirror effect. I would say I am about 70-80% there... You will also notice that I used honey amber flakes which definitely added a nice rich amber color but not so dark that it obscures any of the grain. It is a little more red than I intended which could have been the cherry stain...

I got to the point where I thought I had enough base coat to finalize polishing. I had no idea how long I needed to polish. I ended up polishing through the base coat in an area about the size of a dime. It slowly increased to about the size of a quarter and I knew I needed to start over.

I had a test board I did some polishing on and I think that the polishing needs to be brief. It is not sanding. It is knocking the very fine ridges down. So when polishing with medium grit the goal is to go from fine lines going up and down to fine swirls. Then fine is to bring it down to almost clear. Again, very brief polishing is needed. Then swirl remover. I ended up doing the swirl remover mostly by hand. On the test board I followed up with some paste wax just to provide an extra protective cover.

In summary, I thought the advantages of using a french polish to be:

Ecologically Friendly (If you used grain alcohol you could sip the polish :-)
Fairly easy to work with (epecially liked the quick drying aspect)
Fairly easy to repair. Was able to fix issue with elbow grease instead of abrasives
High shine and nice amber color (though you can choose darker tints).
Inexpensive. I bought about $50 worth, and I would say could easily do 3-4 guitars.

Disadvantages

It is a fairly slow process. You also need to provide significant (2 days) gass off periods for drying.
It is not as hard as some other finishes. I am thinking that this would be fairly vulnerable to fluids and alcohol.

Gecko Fretboard Project

2010-05-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

This project was 'one of those' if you get my drift. It started in a funny way, I purchased a rosewood fretboard from Stew Mac. When I got it, the fingerboard looked dull and lifeless in color. There was also a crack at the top of the fretboard. I called Stew Mac and they said they would said a new board out and keep the old one for scrap. Oh, Ok. I must admit, I purchase quite a bit from them, and have had three issues. All three times I had a replacement free of charge in 3 days. Anyways this wasn't an advertisement for them.

The fretboard I did recive was actually spectacular in color. Deep rich oranges and some yellow in a gorgeous swirl pattern. I instantly new I wanted to work with Paua Abalone. So I went to Andy DePaules site and started narrowing down my choices ;-) I thought the oranges and yellows seemed tropical to me so I decided on the geckos.

I knew that doing a design on rosewood would be tricky from the start, but using such a contrasting color would be interesting. Following my norm I began laying out the pieces. I had originally thought of them as one per fret but actually decided that I would place them 'randomly' on the fretboard. some crossing fret lines.

As is also my norm, I apply liberal amounts of white out to the fret board and place the inlay on top. After the white out dries, the inlay sticks enough for me to scribe the outline. I then use a chisel and outline a stop gap. Then using my router with a precision base I rout out the area. I went a little deep on this one, which meant a lot of sanding dried epoxy latere which took a while. Also a slightly thinner playing surface.

Veneer - White Glue Method

2010-03-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

I am starting to explore using veneers for some of my guitar work. The following is a brief description of some of the work I have done using veneers. I have used the following site as a reference.

http://www.oakwoodveneer.com/tips/ironon.html

Veneer comes in packages of very thin sheets, mine were very curled and cracked. I decided to use a Veneer Softener. I sprayed the veneer sheet I was going to use. I soaked it down, not to the point of saturation but I did want to ensure a good 'spread' of the softener. I knew I would be giving the veneer plenty of chance to dry back out. After wetting down the veneer I gently wrapped it in paper towels and put it in a cold press for more than 24 hours. The veneer came out much straighter and some of the cracks had healed but I won't know how good until I apply...

The basic premise as I understand it is that preparation work must done to the veneer then glue is applied to the veneer and the wood that will be veneered. The glue is then allowed to dry while separate. Once dry you can then placed on top of each other. Using an iron you then apply heat to the veneer through cloth or some type of intermediate heat transfer media in between the veneer and the iron which will reverse the glue and allow it to mix together. Than you put it back into your cold press to dry.

My first test is with TiteBond 3. I really did not allow much time for the glue to dry, perhaps 30 min so we'll see how it comes out... I used a foam roller for the application of glue to the wood. I squirted out some glue, ran the roller over a couple of times to spread the glue out then applied to the surfaces of the wood. I put enough on that provided the ability to see the glue on the surface but no more. The first layer soaked into the wood pretty well on both pieces so I did reapply the glue once.

Here is a photo of the veneer applied to a thin board. The board is on top of the sheet that I cut it from. The two blue oval objects next to it is something my wife worked up in polymer clay.

I imagine veneer doesn't have much tolerance for sanding so I started at 220 and went to 340. It was enough to move all of the adhered fibers and dirt off. It was nice and smooth.

I treated the wood with my fingerboard oil (Dr. Fret). The result I think is excellent. The edges I think will be the most difficult part.

I did want to try some stains, so I prepped the veneer with a pre-stain.

Ibanez GAX 70 Project

2010-03-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

I had an Ibanez GAX 70 that I never really played. After sucess with the Stratocaster Conversion I decided to try and tackle this one.

Originally I was going to redo the fretboard with the vine inlay and leave the body intact. I actually completed the vine inlay project only to find out that the fretboard scale was a Gibson vs Fender.

So I purchased an additional fretboard slotted to that scale length and started over. I went to Andy DePaul's website and selected the Lotus, I decided to do the white mother of pearl because initially I was going to keep the body black.

The first step to inlay is making sure you have your pieces correctly setup. I have almost inlayed some pieces out of order but caught it before I routed the wood. So now I always line my pieces up and keep them in the order they will be applied. This helps with not losing any (yes I have lost pieces and have had to buy individual replacements) and keeping you on track.

The next step is preparation of the fretboard. I knew that with this design, ensuring the inlay was dead center was going to be paramount. I marked the center of each of the frets I was going to inlay. This would help me when placing the pieces so I at least knew where center was.

As I normally do, I paint the area with white out, then while still wet I put the inlay piece on top so that the white out will hold the piece in place when it is dried. I do this because I have had problems in the past with contact cement and other adhesive where I break the inlay getting it back off. This seems to hold it in place firmly enough so I can do the scribing but is fairly easy to remove.

Once I scribe the general outline I then follow up with a mallet and chisel so that I have a stop line when routing. This helps considerably in preventing a 'run' with the router. I usually do the general outline with a 3/32 bit then go in after the crude shape is cut and then use a 1/32 bit to fine tune it. Then I use a chip knife and chisel for the final fit.

Just a word about the final fitting, this is really the most crucial part. You can try to just fit the entire piece in and trim back where there is overlap but in the past I have gotten a 'drift' of the rout as one side fits and the other doesn't so you trim that side. You can end up 'chasing yourself' and end up with more of a 'pool' effect where the inlay doesn't fit snugly. Now I usually choose to fit from the bottom or top first. In this case the bottom was larger and flatter so I tried to fit the bottom in first. Once I had a snug fit I could then trim the top to fit. This prevented the bottom from floating as much. I did run into a little chip out close to some of the fret slots and will have to fill these later with epoxy.

Glueing in the inlay is also tricky. I use epoxy and hardener from Stew Mac and then mix in ebony dust I have from routing. I create a fairly thick mixture, more of a paste. I then put the paste into the rout and press the inlay piece in. If your rout is somewhat of a pool, you have to be careful that piece doesn't slide once covered. I have a caul to fit over the fretboard when I am ready to press and dry. Also if your pieces had broken during the fitting phase, you will have to reassemble them and ensure that they have a clean fit again. I then cover with wax paper, put the caul with the reverse radius over it and clamp and let dry.

Once I let it dry for 24 hours I am ready for sanding. You can see some air pockets are the inlay which will need to be filled. Usually glueing ends up being a two part process. First is to affix the inlay in the route, the second is to even out the drying of the glue. As the expoxy hardens it does contract and if there are air bubbles you will get pockets.

I usually will use flat 80-100 grit just to remove a percentage of the glue. In this case I really didn't need to. I started in with the 180 grit on a 9.5 radius sanding block. This picture shows it sanded down to the point just before I will change to 220 grit for the final sanding. You will also notice some of the fret slots will need to be re-cut but not all of them. The most important part with sanding is paying attention that you don't apply a lopsided radius. It is easy to do. I usually stand so that the finger board is horizontal to by body. I will then rock my body and arms from the left to the right which minimize the turn you apply when you use your arms only. This is slow work and you have to pay attention to inlay and how far you have sanded it. Most inlay's are only a few mm in thickness.

Here is the fretboard, sanded and frets re-cut. It is ready for it's first coat of oil. These boards are usually very dry by the time I get them and since I live in a very arid part of the county they get bone dry. At this stage I will normally oil it up once to let the wood recover before I put the frets in. At this point you can evaluate the inlay. In this case I did fairly well but 2 of the inlays were just slightly off. It will be interesting to see if it becomes more obvious once the frets and strings provide a basic grid... My goal is never perfection, if I wanted that then CNC would be the obvious choice, so a little bit of patience with yourself goes a long way.

Here is the fretboard after its first drink. You can see the natural color of ebony coming out and the grains are more pronounced. This will all settle down after a couple of days. I usually won't do any sanding after oil application. The next step will be the installation of the frets.

Now we can turn our attention to the headstock.

I am not sure what the headstock was made of. I believe it to be an ebony veneer but am not sure. The lotus design had two pieces to it designed to make one whole flower, I decided to split them apart. You should be able to see the center line running through the center of the headstock.

The procedure remains the same, whiteout, attach the pieces, scribe around the pieces, provide a stop cut with the chisel and then rout out the main part of the design with the 3/32 then trim with the 1/32 inch bit except this time it was done by my son :-)

For most of my routing I use the Dremel Drill with Router Base. It seems to meet the need nicely.

Here is the headstock inlayed, sanded down to 400 grit and oiled. I will apply whatever finish I do to the body. I haven't decided that yet, although I do have some Spray Nitro that I have ben wanting to try. It just hasn't been that warm yet. While the work was being done on the neck I began prepping the body. I soaked it in paint stripper for a couple of days then scraped the paint of which came off quite easily. Underneath the paint is what I call the "zoot suit". I have not found a stripper or toxic chemical yet that will remove the "zoot suit". This is when the random orbital sander comes in handy, but the sides and horns need to be done by hand which is tedious at best. Make sure you are wearing a good breathing filtration device, you don't want to inhale this stuff.

This is an important picture. It is the first glimpse of the vision. The wood is . It was a butcher block three piece which is fairly standard on cheap guitars. One of the boards looked exactly like mahogany. One looked a little like ash and the other was just ugly (IMHO). I had in mind an opaque color for the body to match the fretboard and headstock. I thought of putting a 'racing stripe' of elm burl veneer down the middle and up the black. I tested the veneer process and painted three swatches on them. Ebony, natural and Cherry. Everyone like the cherry but me. I liked the natural and ebony.

I researched several different ways to "ebonize" the body. I wanted a very deep opaque black. I had the materials for 3 Ways. One was a Color Tone Stain, another was oil stain that they use for leather and a mini-wax ebony stain that I had used on the Stratocaster. I pre-treated the wood with a pre-stain and let that dry for about 30 min. I was decided on the oil stain and was read to go for it when I just had a desire to do it Cherry and see how it would turn out, if it didn't work out I could always 'ebonize' it. So I put one coat of the cherry on pretty thickly, waited 10 minutes and wiped it dry. Let it dry for 4 hours and then I applied a second coat pretty thickly also. Let that dry for another 10-15 minutes and wiped that off.

Here is the shot from the rear. Really not a bad lookin guitar... I am thinking of doing a quick wipe with the ebony mini-wax and see what turns up, I can always try my black spray paint :-)

Well ended up not opting for the black spray paint but finished with a Watco Danish Oil Finish and a nitro finish on top of that. For the Danish Oil I 'soak' the guitar in the oil, let it dry for about 10-15min then wipe it down. The next time I repeat with wet sanding 400 grit. This creates a slurry which fills the pores and any uneveness. I let it dry for 10-15 min. Then I wipe it down. Then let dry overnight. I will repeat this until I get to about 1000 grit and the guitar is very smooth to touch. I let dry for at least 48 hours.

This provides an excellant base for the nitrocellulose finish. I am trying out the spray can version since I don't currently have an airbrush. I did the last guitar with a hair brush so I figured one step at a time... I improvised a spray booth in my garden shed. I warmed the spray can to about 80 degrees by sitting it in a hot water bath. I have never spray painted so it took a little getting used to. I got some beading and a couple of small runs which seemed to resolve a little with second and third coats. I spaced the coats out by 2 hours and then will let it dry overnight. Tomorrow night I will sand and apply more coats.

In the meantime I was working on attaching the fingerboard to the neck. Having never worked wtih this scale neck before it was a little different. Where the stratocaster finger boards have space for a nut, the Ibanez did not. Trying to glue the nut square to the fingerboard was a little tricky and I did have a little uneveness where the 6th string would go over the nut. I then drilled three guide holes for the fingerboard, applied glue and clamped together. Unfortuntately I did not think ahead and I was already gluing something so the number of clamps became an issue. I also forgot I have a fingerboard caul... So I ended up using only three clamps. It came out ok, but with some gaps between the finger board and the neck.

I decided to move forward anyway and trip the fretboard to the neck. Normally I do this with a hammer and chisel. I forgot I had purchased a scroll saw which would have made quick and efficient work of the overhang... Once I roughed it in with the chisel I sanded it down to approximate width.

I also noticed some rattling (never a good thing) from in the neck. I decided due to the poor glue job and the rattling I was going to have to re-glue the fingerboard,which meant taking off the fingerboard I just glued on. Using an iron and a spatula I separated the fingerboard from the neck and found the problem. The top of the truss rod had come free from the threads. I don't know if it's repairable or not, will have to look at it more closely in the morning.

Stratocaster Project Part III

2010-03-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Although originally I had wanted the hexagon fretboard to be the fretboard for this project, I ended up starting another fretboard project which ultimately become the final fretboard. I decided on a vine inlay design that I saw in Andy DePaul's gallery.

The piece is derived from the Ibanez Line. I decided on Gold MOP because initially the guitar was to all black and thought it would make a nice contrast.

As with any inlay project I layout my pieces to get a feel for how they will fit. There were 2 issues that I needed to deal with right away. Some of the pieces were large and could only fit one way. This made it imperative that the vine flow just right or it would pus the larger pieces off the fretboard. The second was the vine itself, it ran through the entire piece and its location had to be precise.

I put the pieces in order on an 81/2 X 11 piece of paper and marked off the frets. Unfortunately for me the paper fell on the floor and the pieces were mixed. It was almost impossible to recreate the design so I went with the flow and improvised.

I had done a few inlays by this point so I had a bit of a process. I always ordered my fretboards pre-slotted. I normally get them from stew-mac but have purchased some from other suppliers. After laying out all the pieces and putting together the map, I paint white out over the area to be inlayed. I will put the piece on the white out before it dries. After about 10-20min the piece usually is held fairly tightly. I then trace with a scribe the outline of the piece. I then pop off the shell and use a chisel to outline the shape. I then take the dremel and carefully route out the area. I leave any fine detail or corners to a chisel and/or chip knife.

This process can take some time but usually once I have all my materials I can complete the inlay routing process in 2-4 hours. The most important aspect I think is planning the work and working the plan. The routing just takes patience and practice. Fortunately Ebony is fairly forgiving. It is not the easiest wood to work with, it is hard and usually dry and chips easily. The positive side is you can mix in ebony shavings into the epoxy and after sanding it is very difficult to tell. Once finished and oiled I think Ebony is absolutely beautiful. I never die my fretboards, I love the natural variation. Here is a pic of the finished fretboard with a fresh coat of oil. Notice the grain and color towards the right hand side. This is characteristic of un-dyed ebony, you can get some visual swirling that is just visible to the naked eye.

One issue I run into consistently is the breaking of the inlay pieces. They are rather intricate and delicate and trying to fit them into a rout on a surface with a radius can be tricky. I also break them when I clamp the board to glue them. They actually add character to it (IMHO) but some times it can be tricky sanding it out if the ends do not line up just right.

Once I am done with routing it is time to glue. Epoxy is nasty stuff. Exposure needs to be limited and proper planning is called for. It all needs to be done in one smooth step. Usually I will mix the epoxy and hardner in a 1:1. I always eyeball it. I then mix in the ebony dust until it becomes more of a paste. I will stir this for a good 5 min. I then apply the paste in the route, press the inlay piece in, wipe any gross glue squeeze and continue down fret by fret. I then have a caul which has the reverse radius of the fretboard. I put wax paper over the fretboard then clamp on the caul on the wax paper and let it sit for 24 hours.
The next day when you unclamp it you will see an absolute mess. It will look horrible. Now I get my radius sanding block and start working. I use the stew mac ones, they seem to work fine. The trick is not to move your arms, but your whole body. This produces a more consistent stroke and you won't get an uneven radius.

For sanding I will take 120 grit (Flat) sandpaper and start to take off the glue. I don't care if I flatten the fingerboard a little, I will be re-applying a radius later on. When I have the major gunk off I start with a radius sanding block with 180 gold bond sandpaper and start working it. You need to have a bit of perspective here. The inlay has a radius from the caul pressing on it but sometimes the piece will break or sit un-even due to a bad route or something. So taking into account the thickness of the inlay you sand carefully until most of the glue and whiteout is gone. At this point you will start to see some gaps or wholes from air bubbles. I will then clean the area with an exacto knife and re-apply the epoxy and do the whole thing one more time.

The second time around with 180 grit sandpaper, I will continue sanding for another 5 minutes until the white out is almost gone and there is very little to no glue over the shell. Then I will switch to 220 for the remainder. I like 220 because it really smooths the board out but doesn't put a high gloss on the ebony. I love that high gloss look but not on my fingerboards. I prefer porous but smooth. I sand until the radius is firmly in place, the inlay is clear in all areas and the wood is smooth and uniform.

You will notice that a lot of the fret slots will be filled in with epoxy at this point. You can try and prevent this by putting razor blades into the slots. This particular inlay ran across allt he fret lines anyway so I knew I would have to recut them anyway.

I have a fret saw from Stew Mac but the fret size seems just a tad large for there frets. So when I re-saw my fret slots I usually need to epoxy the frets also.

Here is the finished product. I did the headstock in a matching motif. I installed gold frets, they are fairly large and seem comfortable. I go through the entire fretting process which is to install them with a fret hammer. Trim, file, dress, level, sand, polish. Usually all said this takes about 4-6 hours. I am fussy about my frets...

Meanwhile I have stained the body ebony. It came out with a streaked effect but pretty nice looking. I decided not to re-apply the stain but let the streaks and grain really stand out. I then attached the neck to the guitar. I usually do some checks to ensure that the finger board is straight and a straight edge on the frets will point to a spot about 2-3 mm above where the bridge saddles will sit. I will double check the levelness of the frets and correct any issues. Other than that I just bolt it on. Once I string it up I will do a full setup on it which includes the tension rod and intonation.

In retrospect I probably should have applied the finished without the neck attached, but oh well, for some reason I did not. I put the guitar in a tub and began a series of Danish Oil baths.

The general idea here was to apply enough oil to saturate the wood. What was extra hardened on the surface of the wood. You then wet sand that down creating a slurry which fills the peaks and valleys, the goal being as flat a surface as you get. This took me about 8 baths with graduating sand paper. With a day between baths for drying it was about a 2 week process.

I was personally impressed with the finished product. It was very smooth and flat. The appearence was a matte with a medium gloss. The issue with oil finishes are that they are not very protective. Normally you are going to want something on top of that for added protection.

I decided to try and do poly-urethane. Not having spray equipment (yet) I went the brush route. I won't go into it here but it was a very long process but very satisfying. I applied about a dozen coats in total (with a day drying between each). I then used a polishing wheel to buff. There are numerous websites already that details this process quite well. I was very pleased with the gloss I was able to obtain with the wheel and several varying grit polishing solutions.

I of course had to also do the headstock. I took a piece of ebony I had and cut out the shape of the headstock on my jigsaw. I then inlayed the ebony headstock onto the maple one. I had a little tear out I had to repair in the headstock when I drilled the tuner holes out. I also did an inlay on the headstock.

In between the drying and sanding times for the finishes I went pick guard shopping. Since I already had a yin-yang in the body, I thought that one on the pick guard would work also. I found this one on a custom site some where. I ordered one with the bridge pick up to be a humbucker.

I also started to evaluate wiring schema and pickups. I had enough pickups on hand to complete the guitar but don't know if it will be the final configuration. I have all Seymour Duncan Pickups, in the Bridge Alnico's V's, middle cool rails and neck are dumbuckers. My standard wiring includes the neck pup on demand and a 5-way switch. I insulated the cavities and internal pick guard surface with copper foil and grounded it. This makes a huge difference in hum and I do it consistently. I also had three ebony knobs on hand for the volume and tone controls. Right now I have a chrome output jack but will probably swap that out with a black one later. I used black screws for the pickguard.

The project took just about one year. I did have an issue when I strung it up. I had a bit of a back bow to the neck. When I put a straight edge across the top there was a slight rock (about a mm or so) right around the 6th and 7th frets. I loosened the tension on the truss rod and put a single string on to check for the buzz. The buzz was fairly noticeable but alleviates after the 7th fret. From my perspective I had two choices, I could have re-filed the fret around the 5-9 fret area or put some heavy gauge strings on and see how it worked out. I did the latter putting on .12's on the tops and that seemed to provide the necessary pull and resulted in moving the neck into a very slight relief, almost perfect :-)

The finished guitar plays very well. As I have been playing I keep a list of touch up's for the next string change where I can address anything I need to. Right now there are a couple of areas where I need to polish the frets a little smoother. I am also contemplating some poly on the back of the neck, but am evaluating just the wood and oil finish I have on the neck now...

Thursday and Saturday Class Week 7

2009-10-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe we are already in week 7. I think the biggest difference is that we feel more comfortable with the tools and working with wood. Before when we had a very easy task, say cut a peice of wood to a specific dimension it was difficult for us to visualize the steps to get there and choose the right tools. Of course there are a lot of different ways to approach a single problem, we are coming up with them instead of having to constantly ask a resource.

This week was dedicated to the creation and installation of the bracing. Then "voicing" the top. This voicing takes a lot of patience and detail work. The basic theory is that if you have a stiff top the tone will not have the resonance nor the low tones available to it. By removing wood from the bracing you are allowing the top to be much more flexible, increasing resonance and projection and higher tones. This requires a good ear to hear these sounds as you are removing the wood.

Typically as you remove wood and approach the 'sweet spot', the trick is knowing when to stop since once you go beyond this point you are structurally at risk and your tone could get muddy very quickly. None of us had the experience or developed ear at this point so we were very dependent on Robbie's guidance. But going through this experience has definately increased my "library" of tones as well starting to learn what a guitar top should sound like.

This is a picture of the bacing on the back of the top being adjusted. Using a chisel we begin to remove wood being carefull to keep the same general shape. The brace Cian is working on has two humps. The first one on the inside needs to be about 2.5 inches from the X Brace it is connected to. The outside hump needs to be about 3 inches from the edge of the guitar. This positioning gives you optimal spacing for both tone and support.

This is a closeup of the brace being worked on. It is a slow process where you carve a little, tap the guitar, listen and begin removing more wood. Now is a good time to mention that your chisel is an important tool in this process. The ones at school were very dull. We did not really comprehend the issue until I purchased a set and sharpened them. WHAT A DIFFERENCE.

The main issue with reducing the bracing is that you are absolutely effecting the structure and support of the guitar. You must also be careful because a slip and the chisel will go through the top. This is also a good time to identify any gaps or issue with the bracing and repair if appropriate. We were pretty good to go but had to take quite a bit of wood off.

Once we were satisfied with the tone we started our sanding process. Event through no one would really ever see the bracing unless they used a mirror or took the top off, Robbie has installed a sense of pride in us. We are not simply building a guitar, we are learning a craft. As with every craft it is important to know how it will be judged. As I have heard many times before, the difference between a good guitar and a great guitar is attention to subtleties. We will always know what the inside looks so we want to have that "positive image". It took us a good hour or more to sand it. We started with 120 grit to reduce and blend some of the joints together than sanded the entire bracing and inside of the top with 240 grit. All that sanding in turn reduces the amount of wood and effects tone, so you need to be careful with that as well.

]Here's a picture of Cian taking a well deserved break. It was nice that we had two people so that we could switch off. Although once you get going you do get into a rhythm and feel for the particular brace you are working with. Since braces are quarter sawn they can be obnoxious at times, splintering or developing runs. You just need to be patient working in one direction than switching to another. All in all though it does teach you a lot about the properties of wood.

Here is a picture of the back of the top with all the carving and sanding complete. This is more or less what it will look like when it is glued on. What we should have is a strong top but flexible.

This picture show the bracing around the sound hole. Obviously when you cut a hole into the middle of the top this produces some structural weakness in a top where the strings are pulling at it with approximately 180lbs of pressure. Notice at the top we have our access hole to the truss rod when we put our neck on. Also the Indian rosewood reinforcement piece for the bridge.

Close up of the bracing now fully carved and sanded. You can see some of pencil circles which indicate where the brace should be. We taper the ends off to blend in with the top.

A last check for the tone and we are good to go. Next Thursday we will start to attach the front to the back, then route for your channel bindings and install them.

And finally we did have time for a little fun and a group picture of everyone there on Saturday.

Week 6 - Thursday and Saturday Class

2009-10-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

This week, and probably next week, will be spent mainly on constructing and finishing the front braces. The theory behind it is fairly complicated but really revolves around two main points.

Support: The strings will exert about 180lbs of force on the middle of a spruce top which is 2.4mm thick. To give you some perspective, I could easily snap the guitar top with my two hands and minimal force. The entire top weighs perhaps a couple of ounces.
Sound: The top basically operates as an air pump. As the strings are picked or strummed, the energy will be transferred to the bridge and then to the bracing which in turn will transfer the energy to the top of the guitar.

Stratocaster Project Part II

2009-10-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

Please see part I for a detailed description of what I have done so far. This is part two. Part I composed of stripping the guitar down to the wood and doing an inlay on the body. Part II will be making a custom neck with inlay, Part III will be painting the body and Part IV will be the electronics and putting it all together.

The plan for Part II will to purchase an ebony fingerboard and do the inlay. Then separate the rosewood fingerboard from the existing neck and glue the new ebony finger board to the existing neck. Obviously the first step was to decide on the inlay for the fretboard. This was not an easy decision. I had to way my minimal (but steadily increasing) skillset with what I "really" wanted. I feel for this project I have decided on a good compromise.

I have decided on the open hexagon. This design was actually part of a Martin Limited Edition. Since the guitar body will be black and the fingerboard ebony (I am considering painting the actual neck black also) I wanted to stay with white Mother of Pearl (MOP). I thought the design simple but elegant. The routing should not be an issue which will leave me to focus on all the other things that need to happen. I ordered the fingerboard yesterday from Stewart - MacDonald and should receive by the end of the week.

They come preslotted, radiused and cut. I can then do the inlay and sand them down. On the existing neck, I will have to steam and pry the old fingerboard off of the neck which I have never done before. Once the old fingerboard is removed I can then glue the new one on. I will then sand down the neck. I want to try sanding the back of the neck to an elliptical shape to custom fit my hand. Then the plan is to either paint or finish the neck and then attach to the body once I have painted it. As I go through the steps of the neck I will post them here...

Sunday October 18th

OK, this is going to be a process. I ordered the material from Stewart McDonald.

I ordered some painting supplies which came with a book "Guitar Finishing". The ebony fretboard looks nice, it has a lot of light brown streaks to it. I also received some black dye in case I decide to dye the fretboard. I also bought some unrelated items, chisels, potentiators etc...

As with any inlay project, time to get a visual on the end result. I laid out the inlay on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 21st and 13rd frets for a total of 10 pieces.

I decided on centered hexagons for the inlay design. I then numbered the frets that I was using. I then measured the Width and Height of each fret to be used to center the inlay on the fretboard.

I then convered the area where the inlay was to go with white out. I then take the measurements and draw a vertical and horizontal line in the white out. This let's me see the exact center of the fret area. I then glue the inlay down and let it dry. I then take my scribe and scribe around the glued inlay piece. This is probably the most important part of the process, getting an accurate inlay outline on the wood.

Here is a photo of the Inlay glued to the fretboard. Notice the cross in the middle of the hexagons that lets me know where my center is. The project would be a failure if the inlay was not lined up correctly.

Here is a close up of the hexagon routed out about 90%. I leave the perpendicular corners to a chisel although splint out is common in ebony.

I use a dremel tool with the braces and it works very well. I usually use a 1-3/32 router bit depending. Frequent fitting of the Inlay caused me to break about 4 pieces. Although I consider the Inlay of high quality it is extremely fragile. But for a good tight fit you need to frequently check.

As always I then glue the inlay in the fretboard usually overnight. The next day I will sand up to about 220-280 depending on the pores in the grain. Finer for larger pore and coarser for small pore.

Vertical Pentatonic Soloing

2009-10-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

This post assumes that you have some experience with the Pentatonic Scale and it's "normal" usage. I find Pentatonic Scales are very easy to remember and they sound great when used appropriatley. I find that when I use a Major Scale (7 note), I am leaving out some of the dissonent tones which kind of puts me back to a pentatonic in the first place. Any notes that I need that aren't inherently in the pentatonic I add usually by bending the string a half or whole step. The only disadvantage to the Pentatonic Scale that I have found is that it is easy to feel 'boxed in'. I feel myself stretching the box in a vertical fashion (including the pattern above or below it) but still feel as if this is an addition and not the way the scale lends itself to be used.

To combat this I have found a book (Fretboard Knowledge for the Contemporary Guitarist) that describes a technique that I have found very useful. I have renamed this to vertical pentatonic soloing as these 'scales' or repetitive patterns naturally travel vertically rather than horizontally. The concept is very simple but is based on two things you need to know.

1) Roots - You need to know where your roots are. This is actually quite simple using the W method.

2) The 2-2 rule. You can find the same name note from any location on the fretboard by travelling two strings up (towards the high E string) and two frets down (towards the twelveth fret). This holds true EXCEPT when you are crossing from the 3rd String (G) to the 2nd (B) because these are tuned differently then the rest of the guitar.

These two concepts alone will give you a much better picture of the fretboard. Now we will take the Pentatonic Minor Scale and break it into 5 smaller boxes (4 notes a piece). If you know one box, by applying the 2-2 rule this box now moves (vertically) up the fretboard. This does two things. Provides a fertile ground for repetition of the note patterns and it naturally moves you up and down the fretboard rather than horizontally.

So as you learn your pentatonics horizontally, take the time to learn them vertically as well. This will automatically add a dramatic element to your soloing... You can stay within the pentatonic scale pattern and travel horizontally then using the patterns shown above move up and down the fret board at will!

Week 5 - Saturday Morning Class

2009-10-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

First of all, I apologize for not posting sooner. Thought I lost the camera, travel for work and nasty cold virus has made it an interesting 2 weeks. We have completed the back of the guitar, joining, gluing and putting the bracing together. We then fitted that onto the back of the guitar, cut the sides with a router to allow for the back bracing to come through. We have now focused our attention to the front. But before I go there, a couple of pictures of what we have completed.

Here's the inside of the guitar as it stands now. Notice the mahogany kerfing on the bottom, spruce on top. The center strip is a very thin piece of spruce, the cross bracing is mahogany also.

Just a birds eye view. We were very lucky with our wood. It had extremely nice coloring to the Indian Rosewood. We got our kit from Luthiers Mercentile Incorporated (LMI). I would highly recommend them, they have been a pleasure to deal with.

Here's a picture of the joined back. The shape is cut roughly to size. We will trim it to the guitar once we have our top completed. The coloring is really magnificent. I have not seen much rosewood with this amount and hue of reds. I think once polished up it will look magnificant. It is a feeling of joy to walk around the shop and watch everyones project start to look like a guitar.

And this is where we started this morning! You will notice the white looking wood in front of Cian is actually the joined top of the guitar. The top, like the back, came in two pieces. We planed the sides until they matched exactly and then glued the together. The first thing we need to do is install the Rosette. The Rosette is the decorative trim around the sound hole of the guitar. There are actually two 'accompaniments', perfing, which we will be two cirlces, one inside the rosetter and one outside. In order to do this we use the measurements from the plans and plot out the center of the sound hole. From this we draw a circle which forms the outline for the soundhole, then we measure and mark the rosette, and the accompanying rings.

We then drill a hole in the center and sink a post which will anchor our circle routing jig. We then set the diameter to the diameter of the rosetter and off we go. The outer rings we did in one pass with an 1/8 inch bit which was exactly the width of the perfing. The rosette took three. The last one we did was because the rosette could almost fit. We probably should have tried working it in by running a steel ruler inside to compress the wood. So ours actually was not a really tight fit, but it was snug.

Cutting into Spruce is very interesting. It is a very soft and fibered wood, rather that a grain. It tends to splinter and fuzz. So after each route we needed to recompress the fibers or remove them so the channel is clear.

Heres a close up. You can see the pencil outline of the guitar to the sides. Notice alos that the top of the Rosette is separated. This allows some flexibility when fitting it in. It won't matter because the fretboard from the neck will be on top of this when it is finished.

Here Cian is fitting in the outer ring.

Here it is with two rings placed around the rosette. Now we need to glue them in place. We simply took tight bond white glue and spead them in the routed channel, place wax paper over it and a block of wood on top. Then it was placed in the go-bar apparatus to apply pressure while it dried. I dried for thirty minutes and then it was removed.

We installed the rosette and rings just a "skosh" proud. In other words a little above the top of the guitar. Now using a cabinet scraper we scrapped the front until it was smooth and flush. We will then run the top through the drum sander once all the glue is removed.

The final sept was cutting the soundhole which was really just routing another circle. We made sure the router bit would pass through the entire top of the guitar. Above is the result.

Here is where it stands presently :-) Next week we will begin work on the bracing for the top.

Notice the inlaid tail piece...

Cats Paw Project

2009-09-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

This project started because I wanted to do an Inlay where I manually did every step. I purchased some White Mother of Pearl blanks from Stewart McDonald along with a jewlers saw. As every project starts, I started with a cat's paw design, printed it out, then cut it out and glued it to the blank. I just use TiteBond White Glue and everything comes off very easily with a little sanding. Then using the jewlers saw I cut each of the shapes out. I was not exact with the blade but was able to sand them to the approximate shapes I needed with my Dremel. I then wrote on them in pencil (RP, R1, R2 etc) so that I knew which piece was which. I then super glued each of the pieces to the board. Once they were secure I then took my scribe and outlined the shapes.

I then pried the pieces of using a chisel. Then using my Dremel I routed out the appropriate areas. There is a relationship you will start to learn between how close you route to your scribe lines. Mine is just starting to develop after probably a couple of dozen routing projects. For this project I routed only half of the depth of the MOP. I used the 1/32 blade for the entire project, although I could have switched between a larger one for the paws and back to the smaller for the toes. Once I was done and could almost fit the pieces in I increased the depth to a little over the thickness of the MOP.

Then I took my sanding bit and sanded the sides in the block of wood until the piece slips in with a little pressure. This also has a distinct feel to it that I am starting to learn. Once your at that stage, I mix my epoxy, ebony shavings up and apply liberally, then push all the pieces in and clamp.

After clamping and drying this is what it looks like in the morning :-)

After sanding with 80-100 grit sandpaper. This is where I still have a hard time. As you can see several of the parts of inlay look black or like they are starting to wear off. In reality it is the epoxy with the ebony mixed into it that is obscuring the inlay. I always get nervous at this point wondering if I should sand some more or did I sand too much? However with this one I know my routes were fairly deep and I probably have quite a bit to go before I sanded it off. But be careful, 80-100 will take off quite a bit of wood if aren't careful. I will switch off to 150 grit very shortly.

Here it is after sanding with 150 grit for awhile. Notice I still have some black ebony around the outer toes and the left heel. I think these actually went in just a little crooked so it is either the high side and it is being sanded off or the low side and still needs to be sanded :-) So I sand a little more but selectively over these spots. I am just about to switch to 220 once I can get those areas relatively clear.

Here it is after sanding with 220 for a while. I also added a little Danish Oil to it which really brings out the color of the ebony. The ebony has ended up being a very good wood to work with. You can notice some disfigurement on the top toes, this is due more to the sanding with the dremel. I was not getting an even sanding motion on the sides after cutting. So as I sanded down, some of this can be seen. I can probably fix this in the future so that I sand the shell down to 220 - 360 to really smooth it out.

Just a finaly shot showing off some of the color of the shell. All in all a sucessful project. I really enjoyed having control over all the elements and doing everything by hand. I learned quite a bit to be used in the next seesion.

Week 3 - Saturday Morning Class

2009-09-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

This morning we retrieved our clamped guitar body and removed the clamps. It was pointed out to us (by our teacher) that the kerfin was raised in about a 5-6 inch section. When I asked him if he would leave it that way he replied "Not if it were my guitar". We debated the risk in trying to repair it vs. possible back problems later on. We decided since we were taking the class we needed to repair it.

So we began the process of replacing the section with new kerfing. First step was to remove the kerfing from the section with a chisel. This was not try and knock the kerfing down to a manageable size. Gently the chisel is placed in the groove and struck with the other hand. Eventurally Cian got very good at this and was able to get it down pretty close to the rosewood.

From there we took a scraper and scraped what was left of the kerging. Then with 150 grit sandpaper we sanded down until the rosewood.

This was rather nerve wracking as you can imagine and we escaped without doing too much harm to the body. New kerfing was applied, glued and clamped and looking much better.

OK, time to clean up any glue squeeze out. We took a razor blade and ran it in the space where the kerfing meets the rosewood. In some spots we sanded with 150 grit sandpaper until smooth. Robbie is a real stickler for leaving everything spotless on the guitar. It is a great motivator and the guitar is starting to take shape...

Time to add more tone to the sphincter. We are going to add an end piece to the guitar. First we cut out the tailpiece according to specifications then we trace it onto the back of the guitar. We clamp a piece of wood parallel to the line and cut and repeat on the other side. Once we have two cuts we then chisel the glued rosewood off of the Mahogany block.

We then apply back to the section and slide the Maple inlay into it getting a very tight seal, then clamp and let dry. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of when it was finished. Thats one thing that is difficulty, remembering to take pictures when you are involved in a step :-)

Now came time to prepare the back. The first step was using the safety planer to bring the back down to a width of a little under 3mm. The picture above is of Cian and Jim running it through the planer...

Class 3 Thursday Night (9/11)

2009-09-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

The Agenda for the night was to finish radiusing the guitar's back. Attach Kerfing to the back, Radious the front to a 15 foot radius, and attach Kerfing. Then construct our side bracing and maybe even bracing for the top. We had quite a bit of planing and sanding left to do on the back. We made three mistakes. The first was we planed one side down to far. This meant we really had to reduce the heel and end block also. When we planed the Neck Block, we planed it straight across instead of at an angle, but this was corrected by planing on an angle. The third was I slipped while planing the block and cause a small crack at the side running with the grain. It was fairly small but if unattended the crack could run further. So a little super glue and accelerant and we good to continue sanding. We finally got to where we thought we needed to be and started the Kerfing.

Kerfing is used sort of like a shelf. I runs along the sides of the guitar and will provide the support for where the top and bottom meet the sides. Kerfing feels almost like balsa wood. Our back Kerfing was Mahogany and our front was Maple. Very thin and light weight. It is heavily scored so it is really flexible but very fragile. 1st order of business it to measure from Neck to Heel Block the amount of Kerfing we would need. To do this you have to run the Kerfing inside around the grooves from Block to Block which is what Cian is doing in the picture above. The first time we tried to do this we promptly snapped the Kerfing...

There is a trick, if you lightly clamp in on with clothespins,and let the clothespins do the bending for you it is possible to do without breaking it... Not easy but possible.

Once you have the right amount of Kerfing you are ready to glue it. You apply a thin layer of glue on the back. Not enough, it won't be strong, too much and you will get a lot of 'squeeze through' which is difficult to clean up after. Once you have glue on your Kerfing, using your high tech glue application device (finger), you gently squeeze the Kerfing to the side while applying a high tech force distribution device (clothspin with a rubber band wrapped around it) you work your way around the side. You are watching to ensure the Kerfing makes clean contact with the sides, clean the glue squeeze out and ensure the Kerfing is a 'scosh' above the side. We will be radiusing the kerfin to match the sides at some point.

Here is the back side, Kerfing glued and clamped. It takes about 30 minutes to dry which we used to start our side bracking. We found some nice scrap Maple and measured and cut those. Sanded and Radiused the Front along with glueing the Kerfing and had to call it a night.

Flower

2009-09-09T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about it for a little while now. I finally purchased a jewlers saw and some mother of pearl blanks. I got white and grey to contrast with one another. I decided to create an inlay piece from scratch. I chose this pattern out of an inlay book I purchased.

I thought since it was my first attempt I wouldn't be quite that ambitious, but took the first flower for the design. The first step is to break down the pattern into geometric shapes.

Here are the leaves at the base of the plant. I will do these in white mother of pearl.

Here are the leaves to the left of the plant that I plan on doing in grey mother of pearl.

Here is the grey mother or pearl against the backdrop. I decided to use Mahongy for this and wanted the grain going left to right to give the impression of a horizon behind it. This presented a small challenge in carving since it is easier to go with the grain. I also decided that the 'stalk' of the plant would be Maple. I like the idea of contrasting woods, and I wanted the grain in the stalk to go perpendicular to the horizon.

Once I had cut the shapes out of the shell using my saw (I will do a separate blog on cutting shell), I arranged the pieces on the Mahogany to visualize it.

As with all inlay projects, I spread some white out on the wood, glued the pieces down and scribed around it. I then removed the pieces by gently prying a chisel under the pieces. I then ran the outline with a sharp knife to deepen the grooves.

Here is the piece routed out. I decided to put a sun in the background. My wife does polymer clay so thought we would experiment a little.

I ended up sanding a little too much on the right side and part of the sun and one whole leaf was sanded off - oops.

Ebony Dove

2009-09-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

First of all I apologize since I didn't have my camera with me for most of it. I bought a very large piece of ebony meant more for a lathe. I thought I could 'slice' the block into smaller pieces and do my inlay on those. I first tried with my Mitre Saw but I no support for the wood since it was a rectangle and I had slice with the wood standing end to end in order to match the grain. I took a first pass and the blade smoked and a hunk of ebony went flying... :-o

Plan B: Buy a box wood saw at Lowes. They didn't really have what I wanted, most of them were plastic. I ended up buying a cheap plastic one and wish I hadn't. Totally worthless.

Plan C: Call a friend :-) He had a bigger table saw with a ten inch blade. It took us a good 40 minutes and lots of smoke and a new blade... We were only able to cut up half the block!

Note to self: Purchase PRE CUT ebony from now on... it's worth it!

I had learned a couple things from the last project. I won't go through the steps again, just refer to Dove Inlay. I used super glue this time to hold down the dove and it worked much better. The area that was giving me issues were the bottom of the Dove where it gets real thin. Just the process of running a scribe next to it would bend it and distort the bottom.\

I had also purchased a 1/32 inch router for the dremel nbsp; That absolutely helped a lot... I still had to the ends of the bottom with a chisel and gouge. Last time I had some problems fitting the inlay into the channel. I kept widening it but in reality I just don't think it was deep enough. I went about 1/16 of an inch deeper than I did with the last one. It didn't just "fall in" but was much better than last time. Also since I didn't use a chisel on the main part I didn't have to use the sanding bit either.

These bits are very small and fragile. I did break one already. If you see smoke, stop < lol > They worked very well and gave me a consistent bite.

A little about ebony. Here is a picture of ebony in it's natural state.

They say that ebony, like any wood, ebony is subject to drying and cracking: especially in dry climates. The manager of a store also told me that wood had been there for over 2 1/2 years. Even though it was wrapped in a wax coating, I have notice several cracks. Not bad and I do live in Colorado which is a very dry climate. I am trying soaking one of the blocks overnight to see if it helps.

The wood itself was great for carving. Very firm, responsive to cutting and routing. The chips and sawdust were very beautiful, with deep red and brown hues running through it. I have included a picture above, while not a good picture, really shows the color of the wood.

Here is the finished product. The flash really showed of the color of the Mother of Pearl. Unfortunately for this particular inlay I broke the head into four separate pieces by accident. I was able to super glue some parts so that I had two pieces. I prepared my epoxy and this time added in ebony sawdust to color the glue. Although I had a much better fit this time, I have an area or two that could use a little extra color.

50th Birthday Guitar

2009-09-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

My newest addition to the family... For my 50th Birthday I am designing a guitar. This is the body that I just received from Warmoth. I purchased a Strat Style, Front Route, Chambered body with f hole. Birdseye Maple Laminate with a Tobacco Sunburst finish (front and back). This picture doesn't do it justice, I will post others as I get them...

I have not chosen the neck yet, although I am fairly certain what I am getting. I still have not decided on the bridge, or pick-ups. The configuration is for a H - S - H. Also have not decided on the wiring or pick-guard. I have thought about doing a pickguard made out of wood and inlayed...

A Discussion about A Major Pentatonic use with I, IV & V

2009-09-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

A Major Pentatonic is a 5 note scale (hence pentatonic :-). It is the 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6th of the major scale. Since ther is no 4th, you will be a little hampered in finding the root of the IV chord in the scale itself.

Consider:

The A Major Pentatonic Scale (1, 2, 3, 5, 6). The notes are A B C# E F#
The I Chord is A (A, C#, E)
The IV Chord is D (D, F#, A)
The V Chorde is E (E, G#, B) - Note G# (7th) is not found in the scale

To the left are the arpeggios of each of the chords.

Stratocaster Project

2009-09-04T15:55:00.000-07:00

First you need to know where it came from. Here’s a picture of it with its full finish. It was literally a $120 guitar. The finish had several nicks in it and had peeled in one location. I decided to chemically strip it for a couple of reasons and now having done it, am glad I went that route. Took all the hardware off and the neck, taped up the inner cavity because I had just finished putting copper foil down. You can see it peeking up in the second pickup position (lower left corner). You put copper foil down and solder it to ground which will protect the electronics from any RF interference through the pickups…

Then I applied a some toxic solutions… Although it looks dramatic the actual chemical breakdown took quite awhile. While I noticed some small bubbling after 15-30 min, it took about 10 hours and several scrapes and re-applications of the stripper.

That paint job was tough! To make it worse, what looks like wood below was really a plastic “undercoating” that wrapped the entire guitar. It only minimally interacted with the stripper. It took me three days over the weekend to get it off.

Then a lot of sanding. Luckily I went out and bought a nice orbital sander to do most of it, but there was still about 4-5 hours by hand put in, especially around the horns. I had to take a wooden dowel, wrap sand paper around it and rub it that way. Below you will see wood and the “coating” still stubbornly stuck in some spots. That stuff was tenacious. I still haven’t cleaned out the innards yet.

A vision – I really debated over how to finish the guitar. I was leaning to a natural stain given the coloring. I later discovered that the bottom (I think it is basswood, cheap) has an alder (has a nice tone, fender uses it a lot) veneer on top of it. I really didn’t find that out until later when I sanded too much L. So at that point I decided to go chrome black with a super high gloss (David Gilmour anyone?). To customize it I wanted to try my hand at inlay. I decided I would do two inlays. One of a Ying Yang. I thought with the guitar being black and with a white pick guard, that would look perfect. The other was the silhouette of a white dove (shown on black material). I chose that because of the lines. I thought I could do it and it looked like something that would definitely compliment the guitar. I found a website that sells these, the guy runs it out of his home in Oregon, his name is Andy, really nice guy. Anyway, he imports the shells directly from Vietnam and the inlays are mother of pearl and abalone, and the work up close is just stunning. They really catch the light and throw back a spectrum of colors.

This is my first attempt at any inlay. I literally have never done this. The hardest part was trying to decide how to route the circle. I really thought there must be an easy way to do it, but to no avail. I ended up just trying to do it free hand. One of my “best” qualities (as you probably already know) is I can be downright stubborn at times. I used a sharpie and drew around the circle. I then took my router and started in the middle and just kept making the circle bigger until I just reached the outer black circle. Then I used a sander bit on my router and kept sanding and testing the inlay until it fit… I did practice this technique seven times on a scrap piece of wood (and I am glad I did!)

Here’s a picture of the inlay in the guitar. I think it came it out a lot better than I was expecting! I purchase a gouge and a carving knife and will attempt the dove. Once they are all in than I sand, paint and apply the finish which will take about 8 weeks or so… I am building the electronics so once the paint is done, I slap on a new pick guard with new pickups and new wiring, bolt a neck onto it and string er up!

For the second part of this blog, please see a Stratocaster Project Part II

Class 2 (Thursday Night)

2009-09-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of work to do on Thursday, especially since no class on Saturday for the upcoming Labor Day Weekend. The agenda was to attach the sides to the Heel and End Block, then radius the back of the guitar to a 30ft radius, the top to a 15 foot radius and attach the Kerfling used to support the back and front and create the insert for the end of the guitar. We had our heel blocks created and the sides bent from the last class, so our first task was to glue the blocks in place. We had to measure the sides and trim them to fit in the form and not overlap. We were able to do this quickly and set to glueing the blocks.

Cian had to use his "high-tech glue applicator" to apply the glue to the block. While glueing may in and of itself may seem simple enough, it is key to a great majority of the steps in building a guitar. Not enough and you risk jeopardizing the strength of the guitar, and too much you have a real clean-up issue on you hands.

We thought this was too much and ended up reducing the amount considerably, probably too much reduction because once glued there were areas that while I am sure they are secured, you could not see the glue on the edges. So as with everything in life it is a balance that is learned. Just not to be taken for granted.

Here is a photo where both the Heel (neck) and the End (bottom) of the guitar are in place and clamped for the glue to try.

Just a close up of the clamping process. Note that we have clamped it from the top and bottom and removed the sides from the form.

This picture just shows it from another angle. Clamps on the bottom and top with cardboard protecting the wood of the sides. You will notice that where the sides meet don't match up exactly. While it is perfectly ok for them to match up precisely, it is not absolutely necessary as wood is removed to allow for the neck and end piece. What was a little more critical would be that those sides are parallel and did not have an angle, since any angle at this point produces some 'twist' through the sides. We had a little, but believe we can compensate with the planing of the guitar later in the process. But a good lesson for future builds...

Now comes the arduos and "pucker producing" task of planing the guitar. The two ends are not the same size so there is a general "sloping" that occurs from the end to the neck heel of the guitar. Using a hand plane the sides width is reduced from around 110mm to around 100mm. Together with the top and bottom attached the total width of the guitar should be about 105mm. You need to be very careful that the plane does not grab the grain and create a crack in the sides. We had two colleagues have this happen. It can be fixed with application of super glue.

In this photo Cian is checking the radius using a radius dish with assistance from Jim. These are dishes that have the appropriate radius to them. You turn the guitar over, lay it in the dish and check for spaces. The guitar should fit nice and flush and not allow any sunlight through. This identifies high spots and where to plane. We did run into an issue here where we had a high spot on one side but when we flipped it to plane that side gets reversed and we were re-planing the low spot instead of the high spot. Another lesson learned, easy to get confused where your top and bottom, right and left are when you are flipping these around. We believe it is a minor problem but will probably result in the neck area being slightly more shallow than the plans called for.

You may notice that there is sand paper in the bowl. You can take the guitar body and "twist" it in the bowl which will sand it. We have learned that sanding is useful but only used when needed. Sanding at this stage will wear out the sandpaper and put a considerable amount of dust in the air.

So that calls for more planing! I have never used a plane before so I asked for a planing lesson. The 'trick' is to approach the wood at an angle and when the blade catches continue on the angle keeping the back end of the plane off the wood. If the rear of the plane rides on top of the wood your cut is very shallow if you get a cut at all... As with everything practice is needed.

We were not able to get to the Kerfing but are very close. Some more planing was needed to correct the mistake we had made earlier and we just started sanding. So another 20-30 minutes and we will be ready to apply the Kerfing.

Here is a picture of one of the students and Robbie applying clamps to the Kerfing using a "high tech Kerfing clamp" (clothespin w/rubber bands wrapped around it). The Kerfing is sort of like a wooden 90 degree shelf that lines the front and bottom of the guitar and is what is used to glue the top and bottom wood to.

Next week we will finish our planing, sanding and radiusing, apply the Kerfing and start to prepare our back side for mounting. General feeling this week was excitement as we started to see the guitar take shape and of course some disappointment as lessons learned always carry a little pain with them. But overall we are very pleased with our progress, have learned a tremendous amount in a short period of time. We are always a little disappointed when the clean up bell comes.

Dove Inlay

2009-08-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the blurriness on some of these photos. Still learning the camera. This was my attempt to inlay a mother of pearl dove onto a piece of Mahogany. I am just starting to learn, having only done one before this and it was a circle at that. I have been getting my inlay precut from Andy at http://www.luthiersupply.com/. Great selection and the quality is superb. I have been very happy with the pieces I have recieved so far. Above is a picture off of his web site of the dove. It is quite small and quite thin. The 1/16th Dremel Routing bit I had was too large for it. I started by clamping a blank piece of mahogany in my vice.

I start by applying white out over the area I want to route. The purpose is so when you scribe the shape it will remove the paint and leave a visible outline of your inlay piece. Several people suggest cementing your inlay to the board while you scribe. I just use a glue stick and hold it in place. Much easier to remove that way (IMHO).

I usually use a scribe (metal bar with a very pointy end), and then go over it with a razor blade to deepen the groove. In my opinion this part is Extremely Important. Take your time and do it accurately. Just doing this small inlay took me a good 15 - 20 minutes to scribe.

I then followed the outline using a 1/4 inch chisel, lightly at first in case I made a mistake. I have a 30 oz rubber mallet that really helps "make a good impression". I am not concerned with removing wood at this point, only providing a nice outline.

Here you can plainly see the outline of the body of the dove. Now I take my 1mm (yes 1 mm) gouge and starting in the middle working out I began to gouge and remove wood. I start lightly at first, then a little deeper, loosening the middle by running the razor blade over the outline occasionally.

You can see I have removed the wood with the gouge. This is where I will start to see if the inlay fits. I don't force it but apply light pressure. Where it doesn't fit I either use a razor blade or gouge to remove just a little bit more wood. Mahogny is fairly soft so you need to be careful. Work in small increments and try fitting the inlay after each modification. Patience...

I have purchased a set of sanding heads for the dremmel. These are metal poles at varying widths that are diamond encrusted. I have them at grits of 150, 220, 440 and 660. The whole set was very inexpensive and it has saved me an enormous amount of time. When I have a rough fit I LIGHTLY run the sanding tool through the outline several times being careful not to really enlarge the route but make it smooth and tight fitting. These sanding tools were not made for routing or removing more than a fine layer of wood at a time. If you apply too much pressure they will break.

Here is the dove in the route. I got a pretty tight fit, but sometimes you have to repair parts. With Ebony there is a trick where you can take ebony saw dust, mix it in with your epoxy and it covers it up nicely. I know it doesn't work with maple and doubt it will with Mahogany. Once I get there I will update the blog to show the glueing process and the sanding...

OK, I was able to complete and sand the Dove down. While I thought it was a good first try, definately not ready for primetime, but that's why I am practicing. You can cleary see some spacing issues. I am thinking this was due more to the inscribing process. When I would run my scribe on the thin parts they were quite flexible and moved. Then when I tried to fit the piece I widened it to accomodate. The trick with mahogany was not really succesful either. I can clearly see the clue lines. I think I could use this trick but only for minimal areas...

All in all a fun project that I learned a lot from. I do have another Dove Inlay so I will try again. Perhaps in Maple :-o

Class 1 (Saturday Lab)

2009-08-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning class is a combined class of the classical and steel guitar making courses. There were several TA's on hand which was nice. The objective today was to build the shell of the acoustic guitar. Our sides would be made out of Brazilian Rosewood and we were lucky enough to have very distinctive coloring in our sides. There was a very noticeable red streak running through the middle of ours which turned to a purple.

In order to build the sides we have to bend the sides into the traditional S shape that an acoustic guitar has. In order bend the sides we needed to attach them together to make the frame. We attach the sides what is called a block. There is one for the neck and one for heel (bottom). The dimensions are 70mm wide 32mm thick X around 90mm tall. I had purchased a 8x8x2 block of mahongany the day before so I set off to find a T.A. to get checked off on the band saw. Cian began the work of sanding down the sides. We had planed it on Thursday night (First night of class) in the Safety Planer. The planer simply reduces the width of the board but does not leave it very smooth. Also if you weren't quick enough in pulling the board through the planer it would start to burn so we had a couple of ring marks that we needed to sand off also. After planning it down to 2.4 mm the board was still rather stiff. There were technical difficulties with the sander but once operational, the side was sanded several times until the board was much flexible

Once the side was sanded we had to do two things before we could bend them. We had to locate the beginning and the end of the side and mark them. You can see the white marks toward the end of the board. We had to mark the center point as well. Know that we knew which side was going to be external facing and which end was going to the neck or the heel of the guitar, we needed to adjust for the curvature of the top of the guitar. We found out that the acoustic body actually tapers slightly as it approaches the neck. Funny after all these years of holding an acoustic I never really knew that. To accomondate for the tapering the sides had to have a radius to the side board as it moves toward the neck. You can plainly see the tapering of the board in the above photo.

Now we turned out attention to constructing the blocks. Once we had cut and sanded the blocks to their specified size, we needed to adjust the bottom heel to the curavature of the bottom of the guitar. This was done by drawing the radius on the block and using a planer shave the corners until it fit snugly against the bottom. The neck did not need this adjustment, but the external portion (facing the sound hole) was planed for cosmetic reasons. Next time you have an acoustic look in the sound hole and you can plainly see the block looking back at you. As we were told, the insides tell as much about your ability as a craftsman as does the inside.

Now that we knew which side was up it was time to bend the sides. Bending the sides is done using a press. The board is thoroughly wet down using a spray bottle then placed in between two metal sheets. A "warming" blanket is place on top. This blanket rapidly heats up to about 500 degress. As it increased in heat we slid down the guides to hold everything in place. There are three guides, one on the bottom, one on the waist (middle) and one at the neck.

In the photo above, Jim (T.A.) shows Cian how the mold is put together. Once the sides are bent, they are placed in the mold until a top and bottom are attached to the sides, several weeks from now...

There is a risk of breaking the sides during this process. If this does happen (and it does), then super glue could be used to repair the break. Fortunately no ones has broken yet.

Notice in this picture the top guide has already been pressed into the waist. I am rolling the bottom guide down to bend the bottom of the guitar. Cian will do the neck as soon as the bottom is complete.

That's one side, now we turn off the blanket which is at about 500 degrees. We let it cool to room temperature. Once it is cool it will be placed in the mold and attached to the neck and heel blocks making the outline complete. That will have to wait until next Thursday since we did not have time to complete it.

Welcome

2007-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

I am new to blogging, so please excuse me while I figure this out. I am hoping to create a central point for family and friends so that we can stay in touch and share photos and information. I am also hoping to create a music space where I can keep information related to playing and listening to music.

Chad